With the final Democratic debate on Sunday putting South Carolina in the spotlight, the question once again rises: Will Bernie Sanders be able to rally black voters there, and across the U.S.?

With its upcoming February 27 Democratic primary, the South Carolina contest is “increasingly seen within the Clinton camp as an essential buttress against the senator for Vermont’s insurgency,” the Guardian‘s Ed Pilkington reported on Monday.

While Sanders is either closing the gap or running ahead of frontrunner Hillary Clinton in both national polls as well as key states such as Iowa and New Hampshire, surveys of African Americans in South Carolina and elsewhere have consistently favored the former Secretary of State.

When asked Sunday about his lagging support from black voters, Sanders responded: “When the African American community becomes familiar with my Congressional record and with our agenda, and with our views on the economy, and criminal justice—just as the general population has become more supportive, so will the African American community, so will the Latino community.”

The notion that Sanders’ message will eventually reach and resonate with black voters is one that has been echoed by his supporters, including Dr. Cornel West, who on Sunday joined the senator in a live-streamed discussion on the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“I was sitting in church today, Mother Emanuel Church, and we were reading the words of Martin Luther King Jr. and it just makes you shake and quiver,” West said. “And I said to myself, ‘This is what the Sanders campaign is about. This is what it’s about. It’s about the poor, working people. It’s about keeping track of the weak and the vulnerable. It’s about mustering the courage to tell the truth about Wall Street, about wealth inequality.'”