Visitors could almost miss it altogether if not for the road sign on the drive in: “Bamberg, home of Nikki Haley, Governor of South Carolina.”
Most mornings, Rusty’s is where the town comes to chat — or argue, as the case may be. Haley comes up often: “Everybody in Bamberg likes her,” said waitress Dianna Crosby.
And in recent days, the talk has focused on the Confederate flag, which Haley is pushing to have removed from the South Carolina statehouse grounds in the wake of the racially motivated massacre of nine African Americans at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston.
Her home town, Haley often says, has changed since the days when, as an Indian American, she could not qualify to become either the white or the black pageant queen. But even with one of their own leading the charge, the town is like much of the rest of the state on the flag: sharply divided along racial lines.
