Four years ago, the rapper Michael Render, better known by his stage name, Killer Mike, endorsed Bernie Sanders for President. “I am here as a proponent for a political revolution,” Render told the crowd at a Sanders rally in Atlanta, where he lives. He had shared a meal with Sanders at Busy Bee Café, a soul-food restaurant; afterward, he told reporters that he and the Vermont senator were “two angry radical guys, one seventy-four and white, one forty and black, finding common ground.” Sanders was the only candidate who was discussing the kinds of changes in domestic and foreign policy that Render thought the country needed. Talking with a TMZ interviewer about American imperialism in August, 2016, after Sanders lost the Democratic nomination, Render said, “If you’re voting for Trump or Hillary Clinton, you’re voting for the same thing.”

Render stands by that remark, he told me recently, at a restaurant in Greensboro, North Carolina. “African-Americans do not have an agenda that’s truly recognized in this country,” he said, explaining his views on Clinton versus Trump. “How would that have been different with her? It’s not like I’m saying, ‘Oh, she’s Trump.’ I’m saying, in the way that it affects my communities, I don’t see where much good could have come out of electing her.” Render had come to Greensboro to stump for Sanders again. He and the senator have stayed in touch, he said—Sanders appears in Render’s iPhone contacts as The OG. “He texts pretty cool. You wouldn’t know you’re talking to a seventy-something-year-old dude,” Render said. Recently, he and Sanders had messaged about reparations. Sanders had been opposed to the idea, but, in April, he announced that he would sign a bill funding research into the subject. “I educated him on that,” Render said.

Render is a big man with a broad paunch and a thick beard; he wore baggy camouflage pants, a black T-shirt, and a gold chain with a miniature rendering of “Perseus with the Head of Medusa,” a work by Cellini, his favorite sculptor. Having just come from the airport, Render did not have his Glock, which he otherwise carries almost everywhere. (He also keeps an AR-15 by his bed.) Render credits his attitude toward guns, and the Second Amendment, in part to his father, who was a cop and a member of the National African American Gun Association. “Any new law that is introduced to affect gun ownership will affect African-Americans first and worst,” Render told me. “I’m not giving up shit.” (In 2016, Clinton criticized Sanders as a “pretty reliable vote for the gun lobby”; Sanders has actually voted for gun control more often than not.)

The first of the day’s campaign events was held at the International Civil Rights Center & Museum, which is housed in a brick-and-stone building that was once a Woolworth’s; a famous sit-in took place there in 1960. About ten Sanders staffers and surrogates, including the actor Danny Glover and Ben Cohen, of Ben & Jerry’s, assembled in the lobby. Sanders arrived and gave Render a fist bump. He and the surrogates were then given a brief, private tour of the museum. A screen showed Martin Luther King, Jr., delivering the “I Have a Dream” speech. Sanders turned to Render. “That’s me,” he said quietly, pointing at a gangly, glasses-wearing white guy in the crowd. It wasn’t him. (“He’s got a hell of a sense of humor,” Render told me later.) When the tour ended, Sanders thanked the docent. “It’s a reminder that we have a horrific and ugly history, and that there’s still lots of work to do,” he said.

A few days before, the Working Families Party, which endorsed Sanders during the last Presidential campaign, announced that, this time, it was supporting Elizabeth Warren. The news fit one of the narratives that had emerged over the summer: Warren, who may be to the right of Sanders but is certainly to the left of Clinton, was picking up support from people who might otherwise have voted for Sanders. Render told me that Warren was his second-favorite candidate. “I’ve liked Elizabeth since the nineties,” he said. But, he added, “It’s hard to beat Trump without the antithesis of him. It’s hard to beat Magneto without Professor X. And I think that’s Sanders.”

The day’s second stop was Prestige Barber College, an African-American establishment in a former cleaners on the northeast side of town. About a hundred people, including a dozen or so getting their hair cut by student barbers, gathered in a large, fluorescent-lit room. When it was Render’s turn to speak, he held forth on Sanders’s commitment to criminal-justice reform and his history of activism. “He is one of the first people I’ve seen run for public office who has the proof in pictures—that he got drug out by the police with us,” he said. “Not that he sympathized. Not that ‘my heart was hurting.’ Naw, I saw this skinny-ass kid in glasses getting drug off.” He went on, building toward a crescendo: “I like Benjamin Franklin, but I love John Brown. Benjamin Franklin said a lot of cool stuff about liberty. John Brown picked up arms against people who looked like him to get my freedom.”

The barbers had mostly stopped barbering. Glover, who had looked sleepy during some of the earlier remarks, was wide awake. Cornel West had joined the group; he laughed slowly and deeply, a sound of agreement. “You put a smile on Curtis Mayfield’s face,” he told Render afterward. “Nina, too.” Render looked thrilled. “How the fuck you not gonna ride with Cornel West?” he asked me later.

Sanders spoke next, offering a broad overview of his positions on a number of issues and insisting that his administration would “attack racism in every conceivable way.” During a Q. & A. that followed, a black trans woman in the audience said to Sanders, “I hear what you’re saying about what you’re doing for the whole of black folks and poor folks. How do queer people and trans people fit into your campaign?” Sanders put his arm around the questioner. “They fit in the way that everyone else fits in,” he said. “We’re going to fight for a non-discriminatory system.” He added, “We kind of look at people as human beings. Everybody. We treat people alike. And we’re going to do our very best to break down the racist, the sexist, and the homophobic, and all the other barriers.” He then told a story about his work, during his time in Congress, to expand gay rights in Vermont, which legalized civil unions in 2000 and gay marriage in 2009.

When the event was over, a twenty-year-old barber-in-training from Greensboro who cuts under the nickname Dice and raps under the moniker Lil Mazi told me that he was now convinced that he should vote for Sanders. He had just given a fade to a twenty-one-year-old vegan chef who was also from Greensboro. “Some enlightenment, some awareness,” the chef said, offering his verdict on the speakers. “But I’d love to see more action. We talk a lot. We have a bunch of plans. But it’s really time for execution.” He said that he didn’t vote for Clinton or Trump in 2016, and that he’s currently undecided.