Walking down the tree-lined streets where she grew up, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley remembers the day she was presented with a beach ball at the Wee Miss Bamberg pageant — not for winning, but as a consolation prize when she and her sister were disqualified.
“They pulled my parents aside and said they had a white queen and they had a black queen and they didn’t want to upset either side by putting us in that category,” she recalls, not the first time nor the last that their Indian heritage made it hard for her family to fit in this small town. “My mom said, ‘Can she at least do her talent?'”
So she sang (irony alert) “This land is your land, this land is my land. ”¦” A family photo from that day shows a solemn Nikki in a ruffled dress and black patent-leather shoes, accepting the gift-wrapped package on stage as the other little girls squirm and chatter, waiting for the contest to continue.
How times have changed.