KINGSTREE, S.C.- Janice McKnight knows what it feels like — the nearly indescribable weight and isolation — when the American dream fails.

“It's so hard to express how it feels, other than to say I just have this overwhelming sense of being stuck,” she said.

She daintily picked over a late lunch at Brown's Bar-B-Q along U.S. Route 52 in Williamsburg County. A rural county that is more than 65 percent black, Williamsburg routinely holds one of the state's highest unemployment rankings; nearly 30 percent of its residents live in poverty.

McKnight lives on disability; she has just spent the morning at her weekly dialysis treatment. Neatly dressed in a purple blouse with silver jewelry, she is slow but powerful in describing life in the county seat.

All around, evidence of decayed manufacturing is overwhelming. “Jesus Saves” signs dot the road every mile or so, as do small churches offering clever signs to persuade the traveler to walk inside.

“I don't want both of my kids to stay here and continue this feeling of being stuck,” she said, describing the emotional and financial toll of poverty. “I am trying to encourage them to move out.”

Tears well and her voice cracks. “But because they don't want to leave me, they want to be close to me, they stay.”

This old farming and factory town in the rural lowlands is laced with Southern charm. What it does not have is jobs.

Baxter Healthcare, once the largest employer, left for Malaysia in 1994 during the Clinton administration, taking more than 800 jobs. That was followed by the textile mills, including the four Kingstree Knit plants that put 900 people out of work between 1995 and 1996. The Tip Top Tees plant is closed, as are the furniture and chemical plants.

A few years ago, the Firestone plant locked its doors.

“They have even closed our hospital,” McKnight said of the suspended operations at Williamsburg Regional Hospital. Fall floods rendered more than half of the facility unusable. Authorities say the closure is temporary but McKnight believes “they will likely outright close it.”

She might be right: Rural hospitals like Kingstree's have buckled under low tax bases in impoverished communities, the high percentage of uninsured patients and a health care system that encourages outpatient treatment instead of hospital stays.

McKnight is the voter Hillary Clinton is supposed to have locked up — female, older than 50 and black — except she isn't: “Oh no, I like Bernie Sanders. When I hear and watch him speak about the issues, there is an authenticity that he truly believes what he is saying.”

James McLaughlin sits in a chair in the parking lot of a Sam's Quick Stop gas station on Main Street, strategically placed in front of a pick-up truck adorned with “Bernie Sanders for President” stickers. Dressed in a crisp white shirt, black braces, trousers and dress shoes, he is hard to miss as you pass through town.

“Let me tell you about why I like Bernie Sanders,” he said. “If you listen to him ... he is not just telling you something you want to hear.”

Buoyant, charming, knowledgeable about the issues, McLaughlin is a well-known political ace in this county. His support for Sanders should not be discounted.

“Let me tell you why I don't like Hillary,” he continued. “I am a Vietnam vet, and when those soldiers got killed over in Benghazi” — referring to the U.S. ambassador and three embassy staffers killed in 2012 — “it really, really got me. ... And another thing: If there hadn't been no Bill Clinton, there would have been no Hillary,” referring to his feeling that she is riding her husband's coattails.

The Clinton campaign might look at McKnight and McLaughlin as outliers; it enters this week's primary contest well ahead of Sanders in polls, especially among older black voters.

What it misses with that assumption is the widespread resistance to the status quo and the many blacks who are tired of falling in line to vote for establishment Democrats.

“Please don't tell me that I have to vote for Hillary,” McKnight said. “I have to vote to loosen this feeling of being stuck.”

Salena Zito is a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review editorial page columnist. E-mail her at szito@tribweb.com