My Vanishing Country

by Bakari Sellers

  A country biscuit might come with your meal, but if you’re at a real country church, you’ll likely be served some liver pudding with the fish and grits.

  My Great Friend Clem

  Near the end of the race for lieutenant governor, I attended a fish fry meet-and-greet with Vincent Sheheen at St. James AME church in Walterboro. Vincent was the Democratic candidate for governor. Although we were not running together, in a way we were running mates.

  Ike and I rode to the church together on a Saturday morning. The Reverend Clementa “Clem” Pinckney greeted us as we pulled up to the church. Clem was both a longtime South Carolina state senator but also the pastor of Emanuel AME church in Charleston. One of the oldest black churches in the Deep South, it is known as Mother Emanuel. This particular day, Clem was at St. James as one of the luminaries.

  I was feeling bruised and weary, and Clem seemed to notice. He walked toward me, and in his deep “Barry White” voice, he asked, “How are you doing?”

  “I’m tired,” I said. I was at the end of the road, the end of a tough campaign. Clem must have seen the stress, because he said something I will never forget: “Bakari, just keep going, going, and going.”

  He was adamant that I not be tired, that I not flirt with quitting. He needed me to continue on. It was like he was admonishing me for saying I was worn out because we just couldn’t afford for me or anyone else to give up. There was so much more to do, so many more battles to be fought.

  He looked hard at me. “Leaders like us, we have to keep going,” he said. “Bakari, we’re praying for you.”

  He was always uplifting, but that day he was almost insisting I stay strong because it wasn’t going to get any easier. When Clem was elected to the statehouse, he was the youngest member of the State Senate. Our districts also overlapped. He took me under his wing because of our young ages, but Clem, who was forty-one at the time of my run, was farther along in his spiritual journey. He had become a preacher at age eighteen and a member of the South Carolina House of Representatives at twenty-three—not much older than me when I had been elected. He was supporting my run for lieutenant governor for a specific purpose: because I wanted to expand Medicaid. I think that if we could have done that, Clem would have just walked away from his political duties as a member of the South Carolina Senate and focused solely on the church.

  About fifty Colleton County voters showed up as we were served fish and grits. I love fried fish, but after sixteen months of it, I honestly had had enough. Often, there’s a deacon over at these church meet-and-greets. This time it was a young woman named Kay Hightower, who was what we called a “faith connect” or “plug.” Her job was valuable to politicians because she coordinated the faith community’s outreach with campaigns.

  As I looked around the hall, I realized we had lost Clem. “Let me go find him,” Kay said. Although we were in a church, Vincent Sheheen and I were dressed casually in jeans, loafers, church socks, a pressed shirt. Clem, however, always wore a full suit, so he was easy for Kay to find.

  Clem introduced us and said of Vincent, “He will lead our state to a new place.” Then I told the crowd I was on a journey similar to David when he faced Goliath. “There are a lot of people who say I can’t win because I’m young, who say I can’t win because I’m black, or who say I can’t win because I’m a Democrat. And then there are those who say I can’t win because I’m a young black Democrat. But I want you to vote for me because of what we believe in, and that’s a better South Carolina.”

  I asked everyone to embolden friends and relatives and co-workers to vote, including every high school senior at Colleton County High School.

  * * *

  Near the end of the campaign, we were running on fumes. Ike and I were both so tired that we sometimes forgot to eat, despite all the food around us.

  One of our last stops was at an event with a business organization. It was different from my other stops, but Ike and I thought it was important to try to engage them. The crowd was nearly all white, and they seemed attentive, if not cautious.

  It was obvious that my energy was not high as I began my speech about healthy foods for kids and in Bamberg County, getting to the point where I say, “I tell people often that growing up in a small country town like I did, there was nothing more important than being able to spend time with your family around your meals on Fridays. . . .”

  And then I stopped talking. “I’m not feeling well,” I said, as several men rushed from the audience and got me seated. I couldn’t remember if I had eaten the day before.

  I caught my breath and said into the microphone in a weak voice: “I’m sorry, but I’m Bakari Sellers. Give me a shot November fourth for lieutenant governor . . . if I’m still around.”

  Ike led me out of the hall. “How about some orange juice or something?” he asked. “You feel like your sugar level’s down?

  * * *

  Lancaster County was the last stop on our South Carolina tour. “We are exactly twenty-four hours away from the possibility of making history,” I told a crowd. “And we’re tired, we’re worn thin. This journey has been long, it’s been arduous, it’s been tough, people write you off, newspapers write you off, polls write you off. But polls don’t vote. We do. We have so much power. And tomorrow we have an amazing opportunity to prove them wrong.” I pointed to a black child in the audience. “We’re not running for anything else other than for this little girl in this yellow shirt right here. So that she can dream big dreams.”

  My voice began to quaver, and tears swelled in my eyes. “So, my name is Bakari Sellers and tomorrow, seven o’clock,” I said, holding up the mike, and then my voice shook, “Victory!”

  Ellen ran toward me, “Baby, you did so well!”

  Election Night—November 4, 2014

  Election Day was sunny. I had a skip in my stride and a win, I felt, under my belt. I had requested a debate for months, but McMaster continually evaded me. I had started tweeting every day he didn’t respond, and finally, at around Day Seventy, he agreed. At our one debate, he had spoken about the past, about working for Ronald Reagan, and he tried hard to link me to Obama, but it was clear I had won our match. Voters on the streets stopped me and applauded. The media and others dapped me for a particular jab about McMaster’s years on the government’s dole. “You’ve been receiving so many government benefits over your career, there are some welfare queens out there who are probably jealous,” I said.

  When I had questioned his ability to create jobs, McMaster claimed, with a smile, that he had created a bunch of jobs by putting people in prison. I came back at him, exclaiming that there are no jobs in prison.

  I was convinced we were going to win; we were going to make history. I felt a calm come over me and was excited as I brought a box of Krispy Kreme donuts that morning for the volunteers, as I always do for my precinct on Election Day. I laughed a bit with some of the volunteers whom I see every election year, handed the donuts to one of them, and then voted. “All right, ladies. Y’all don’t let her eat all those donuts,” I said as I walked out the door.

  Election Day was all calm, but Election Night was intense.

  All of us—Ellen, Ike, the consultants, and others—sat in front of the computer screen in the Hilton Presidential Suite in Columbia. Lionell, one of our campaign staff members, clicked on the computer as I verbally navigated him.

  It started off good: Bamberg County was on fire. “Alright, there we go, 1 percent in. Alright, we’re keeping pace. Go back to my feed,” I said. “Oh, what is that? Whoa, whoa, whoa! What’d you just . . . what’d you just pop up?

  “We got Fairfield,” someone said.

  “Ahh, alright. Take a picture! What is that? That’s what I’m talking about! One down. Forty-five more to go. Oh, Sun City’s in? Look at that. We’re okay!”

  But then suddenly we weren’t okay.

  “You’re only down eight thousand votes,” Ellen tried to reassure me.

  “Fourteen thousand,” I
muttered. “Shit . . . Do we have any more precincts out? Let me see . . . is the city of Anderson in?”

  I shook my head in despair. “My goodness gracious.”

  Soon enough, it was over. I got 41 percent of the vote to McMaster’s 59. McMaster won 75 percent of the white vote and 10 percent of the black vote.

  During an emotional concession speech, I told my supporters, “I’m not going anywhere. . . . The absolute reason that they’re going to have to deal with Bakari Sellers is because I love South Carolina.” I broke down; the tears would not stop. “Thank you and God bless you all.”

  Some reporters were kind that night. One television anchor said, “An emotional Bakari Sellers, is, of course, a rising star in the Democratic Party, so I have to agree, we probably haven’t seen the last of him any time soon.”

  I knew I was going to win that race and make history—up until I didn’t.

  I questioned myself: Did we raise enough money? Did we do a good enough job getting people out to vote? But we knew exactly what the problem was: there just weren’t enough votes out there for a Democrat to win.

  Ike believed I was so impressive to people I met around the state that if I had been a young white man, I would have won the race. But I don’t think that’s true. It would have been closer, certainly, but win? Probably not. I’m still a Democrat in South Carolina.

  Looking back, it was a victory for me and others like me: the fact that a young, black Democrat, in the deepest of red states, could earn 41 percent of the vote was promising, if not downright incredible. Many in the political world were shocked. For us, it meant things were changing, and one day it will be possible for someone black or Democratic to win a statewide position in South Carolina.

  I always tell people that we chipped away at the glass. In South Carolina, in 2014, I won 41 percent of the vote; in Georgia, in 2018, Stacey Abrams won almost 49 percent; and in Florida, in 2018, Andrew Gillum secured 49 percent.

  So, here’s a trend for political consultants: we’re getting closer.

  VIII

  Anxiety

  A Black Man’s Superpower

  I inked my first tattoo during the beginning of my junior year at Morehouse. It’s a portrait of my father across my chest. I have two crosses tattooed on the back of my arm, and I have angel wings on each rib; inside each wing is the name of my mother and my sister. On the right side of my chest, I have a portrait of a young black man reaching over a wall grasping for the hands of his brothers, entitled, “He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother.” That tat is dedicated to Lumumba.

  I have the names of my nieces and nephews inked on my right bicep. I have a famous Einstein quotation tatted inside my left bicep, which says, “Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.” I have the word “Blessed” stretched across my back, from shoulder to shoulder.

  My stepdaughter Kai’s name is inked on my left arm and my wife’s initials on my ring finger. The tree of life is drawn on my left-arm sleeve. I whisper to my two infants all the time that I love them and their names will soon be on my body.

  I suffer from anxiety, and all these tattoos keep my loved ones in my orbit every day, assuring me of their love and letting them know I love them.

  I vividly remember the hot summer evening when anxiety took hold of me and never released its grip. It was June 1996, and I was eleven years old, riding my bike when my mother called me to come inside the house. It was nearly dark, but she was beckoning me because I had a telephone call. My friend Crystal was on the line. Her father coached basketball in middle school, and her mother was a nurse. We attended the same elementary school, Felton Laboratory, on the campus of South Carolina State College.

  I heard her voice on the other end of the line saying, “I called to let you know Al died.”

  Everything went quiet, except for a silent inner scream: Al is dead!

  Our friend Alfred McClenan was called Al. He was a year ahead of me in school, an upcoming ninth grader at Orangeburg-Wilkinson High School. Al and I hooped together in middle school—we were not best friends, but his death changed my life.

  Thirteen-year-old Al collapsed during summer workouts for B-team football. I later heard that he had complained of pain in his lower left torso and then fell over. He asked to remain there on the field until his mother came to get him. He was still conscious when she arrived, but then he passed out. He didn’t wake up after that. The newspaper said Al had had a heart attack.

  I began to visualize, as kids often do, what occurred during the moments of Al’s death. Was he hot or cold? Was it like going to sleep? Did it happen quickly, like in the movies? Did Al’s memories, his hearing, the feeling in his hands and toes and heart, just melt away? He would never attend college. He wouldn’t get to play football again. He wouldn’t graduate from high school. He’d never get married.

  These thoughts triggered in me a profound fear of death. Most young people have a sense of invincibility or immortality, but anytime something puts a dent in that at an early age, it can cause problems.

  I know that’s what happened to me.

  My mother drove me to the memorial service at Orangeburg-Wilkinson, where eventually I attended high school. We pulled up to the school after the service had started, so I stood in the back of the auditorium. Mom didn’t come in with me but let me enter near the end of the service. I now think she was being cautious because this was my first experience with death, and it was a peer’s death—a child’s death.

  Al’s older sister gave a very upbeat speech at the memorial. In the black, rural South, we don’t have funerals, but home-going celebrations of life. I remember his sister saying when he was first born and brought home from the hospital, he looked like a “cute little frog.”

  At the end of the ceremony, I walked down the sloped aisle to the front, where I looked into his casket. That image of a thirteen-year-old boy, with his lips pursed, as happens when a body is embalmed, is still seared into my mind.

  Unraveling the Source of My Anxiety

  After Al’s death, it was a very tough summer. At night, I felt like I was dying. I could barely breathe, my chest hurt, I was having anxiety attacks that felt like a big knot sitting on my chest. This happened every night. Sometimes I cried, many times I got up, and often I didn’t sleep through the night. In fact, that summer I mostly slept during the day: I’d play basketball and then come home to lie down, often beside my mom, who struggled with her own anxiety issues.

  My parents sent me to physicians because by now we could afford that, and I was subjected to a full medical workup. I took a stress test, where you run on a machine with oxygen, and found out I had a heart murmur, but that wasn’t the cause of my problems. Next, my parents took me to a psychological therapist, who prescribed medication. I was probably one of the youngest people I’ve known on the antidepressant Wellbutrin.

  The adults were trying to check my emotions, but later in life I realized that my issues were likely hereditary. Al’s death might have triggered the anxiety, but I probably got it from both parents. I’m almost sure my father suffers from anxiety that he doesn’t even know about, and I believe it’s linked to his losing so much during the civil rights era. So many of his friends were cut down; he’s seen so much violence, experienced so much hate. Then there are the ghosts and scars from the Orangeburg Massacre and the fact that some people still blame him for the violence. I tell people my dad’s eyes don’t pop like they used to because of shedding so many tears, and his shoulders aren’t as upright as they once were from carrying the burdens of so many generations. I think my anxiety also may be connected to the Orangeburg Massacre, the event that has shaped who I am as much as it shaped my father.

  My mother suffers from immobilizing panic attacks. Her hands shake, and sometimes all she wants to do is sleep. When I was a child, she spent many hours and days in bed. She says it’s much more than a sense of being overwhelmed: “It’s scary for a person like me,” she tells me, “because I am a control freak. In the mi
dst of a panic attack, I don’t feel as though I have control. What I do is withdraw until I feel that I have control.”

  Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised to discover that my mother believes her anxiety is also triggered by the trauma she experienced when my father was sent to prison several years after their marriage. She never used to express this to any of us, but now it all makes sense. My parents fled South Carolina and went to Greensboro, North Carolina, before my dad’s imprisonment because his parents worried about his safety. During those years, my mother was living in an unfamiliar city with a newborn baby (my sister Nosizwe). Her husband was locked up for allegedly instigating a riot, during which three people had been killed, and the governor of South Carolina blamed him for everything.

  She called her parents for help, but she says they didn’t sympathize with her situation. She wasn’t sure what to do but survived by relying on her own instincts. And yet, according to my mother, she was surely in the throes of an anxiety attack but didn’t realize it.

  “I did not handle very well Cleve’s pending incarceration, and the ramifications following that,” she now reveals. “I did not live a life that equipped me to imagine prison as being a reality for people. I was clueless. I bore our child while he was in prison. . . . I went through the pregnancy, and was raising the child, and then figured out how we were going to go back and forth to Columbia and visit Cleve in prison. I think what saved me was Nosizwe—no matter what happened, I had to take care of her.”

  My mother’s ability to cope, despite the hardships, is a testament to so many black women and the strength they show. But the anxiety that caught hold of my family, I now suspect, is also a testament to how the struggle for equal rights has left us all with everlasting scars. The Orangeburg Massacre left my family with a father burdened by a felony charge, a mother raising a baby without the man she loved, and a baby girl born without her father. Of course all of this pressure produced anxiety; how could it not?