Obama and Clinton vie for black vote

Posted by Mike Dorning at 6:15 am CST

SELMA, Ala. – At a church that served as starting point for a historic civil rights march, Sen. Barack Obama on Sunday positioned his presidential campaign as a part of the long struggle for African-American political representation.

Obama, an Illinois Democrat, declared himself part of a new cohort of black political leaders that he called "the Joshua Generation." It was Joshua, the Biblical successor to Moses, who led the Jewish people to the Promised Land after Moses delivered them from slavery in Egypt. Surrounded on the altar by several veterans of the 1960s freedom marches, some of whom were beaten and bloodied for the cause, Obama said: "We are in the presence today of a lot of Moseses...of giants whose shoulders we stand on."

But Obama was not alone in staking a claim to hearts of African-American voters in the presidential campaign of 2008. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York addressed an audience at a church nearby, and she was joined here by her husband, former President Bill Clinton – the couple making their first joint campaign appearance since the senator declared her candidacy for the presidency.

Sen. Clinton credited the struggles in Selma and the 1965 Voting Rights Act that resulted with providing new opportunities for women and Hispanics as well as for African Americans – calling the Voting Rights Act "the gift that keeps on giving… It is giving Senator Obama a chance to run for president, (New Mexico Democratic Gov.) Bill Richardson, a Hispanic, a chance to run, and it is giving me a chance," Clinton said. "I know where my chance came from, and I am grateful."

Overflow crowds filled both churches. But even larger crowds followed the former president helping lead a re-enactment of the 1965 "Bloody Sunday" march in Selma that led to the landmark federal legislation guaranteeing minorities the right to vote.

While Obama did not explicitly claim for himself the role of Joshua, that was clearly the implication, coming at the beginning of a campaign to be elected the nation's highest leader. Obama said here: "We've got to remember now that Joshua still has a job to do.''

Obama and Clinton both spoke at a jubilee celebration marking the 42nd anniversary of Bloody Sunday, the march for voting rights that baton-wielding state troopers stopped at Selma's Edmund Pettus Bridge. At the time, Alabama and most other Southern states effectively denied blacks the right to vote through discriminatory application of literacy tests, poll taxes and other measures.

Public horror at the images of ferocious police beatings of non-violent marchers led President Lyndon Johnson to propose the Voting Rights Act, which ushered in black political power in the South.

Obama spoke at a service at Brown Chapel AME Church, where the marchers prayed before crossing the bridge. He was joined by Rep. John Lewis (R-Ga.), one of the marchers who was beaten on the bridge, and the Rev. Joseph Lowery, a lieutenant to the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Some commentators have argued that Obama's life story – he is the son of a white woman from Kansas and a black man from Kenya who was raised by white grandparents in Hawaii -- gives him a different experience than most American blacks. But he asserted that his ancestors in colonial Africa suffered many of the same humiliations as blacks in the Jim Crow-era South, noting his African grandfather was a houseboy whom even in old age his British employers addressed by his first name, rather than his last.

"Sound familiar?" Obama said, rousing a chorus of affirmations.

He offered his life story as a legacy of the civil rights movement, asserting formative events in his life as touchstones of the movement's achievements: Election to high office, the opportunity to study at prestigious Ivy League universities, and even his birth of a mixed-race marriage.

"There was something stirring across the country because of what happened in Selma, Ala., because some folks are willing to march across a bridge. So they got together and Barack Obama Jr. was born," Obama said. "So don't tell me I don't have a claim on Selma, Ala. Don't tell me I'm not coming home to Selma, Ala..

Obama was born in 1961, four years before the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. But spokesman Bill Burton said Obama was "speaking metaphorically about the civil rights movement as a whole."

As both Obama and Clinton court the African-American vote, one of the most important constituencies of the Democratic Party, loyalties are divided.

"We love the Clintons, but it's a brand new day," said Freddie Gholston, 55, of Trinity, Ala., who attends the "Bridge Crossing Jubilee" every year. "It's really possible for Obama to become president."

Althea Roy, 67, a lifelong resident of Selma, said of Clinton: "I think she would be good for our people. Her husband was."

Clinton spoke at the First Baptist Church, just two blocks from the Brown Chapel. During voting rights demonstrations in the early 1960s, the Baptist church often served as a meeting place for King and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference organizers. After King's assassination, Lowery led the group.

Clinton, drawing upon biblical scriptures and the sermons of King, added that after all the "hard work getting rid of literacy tests and poll taxes, we've got to stay awake because we've got a march to continue." To shouts of approval and applause, she added: "How can we rest while poverty and inequality continue to rise? We all know we have to finish the march. That is the call to our generation."

Following the church services, Clinton and Obama appeared together outside the Brown Chapel for a rally that kicked off the march from the church over the Edmund Pettus Bridge. They praised each other.

"It is excellent that we have a candidate like Barack Obama who embodies what all of you fought for here 42 years ago," Sen. Clinton said. Clinton is "doing an excellent job for this country, and we're going to be marching arm-in-arm," Obama said of his Senate colleague.

When the commemorative march began, Obama linked arms with Lowery, who had led the Selma-to-Montgomery march at the request of King. Clinton joined arms with her husband.