Clinton and Obama Unite in Pleas to Blacks (original) (raw)
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Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton and former President Bill Clinton participated in a commemorative march in Selma, Ala., on Sunday.Credit...Erik S. Lesser for The New York Times
- March 5, 2007
SELMA, Ala., March 4 — Evoking the passions and rivalries of the civil rights era, Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton made deeply personal appeals to voters in the sanctuaries of black churches here on Sunday, and then joined former President Bill Clinton for a march across a bridge where white police officers beat protesters, most of them black, nearly 42 years ago.
It was an extraordinary sight: the Clintons and Mr. Obama, two of them competitors for the Democratic presidential nomination, walking — with two black congressman, and sometimes others, in between them — down Martin Luther King Jr. Street to commemorate the footsteps of black demonstrators who were met with violence as they tried to march to Montgomery to demand civil rights in 1965.
The visit to Selma, a historically rich, economically struggling city, became a proxy battle for black support between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama, whose candidacy represents a threat to Mrs. Clinton’s traditional base. That competitive dynamic intensified on Sunday with the debut of Mr. Clinton on the campaign trail, six weeks into his wife’s bid, and among a bloc of voters who are at once devoted to the former president and torn between his wife and Mr. Obama.
It was the first side-by-side appearance of Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton in the 2008 presidential campaign, and the political theater of the two campaigns overlapped repeatedly, but with a polite tone that contrasted with their political skirmishing of recent weeks. Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton spoke at services on the same street, three blocks apart, and the lines of worshipers were so long that they nearly intermingled. Both candidates paid homage to the same civil rights leaders, and both concluded the services by locking arms with worshipers and swaying to “We Shall Overcome.”
At different points, both Clintons said that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 had paved the way for Mr. Obama to run for president.
“Today it is giving Senator Obama the chance to run for president,” Mrs. Clinton told worshipers at the First Baptist Church, to enthusiastic applause. “And by its logic and spirit, it is giving the same chance to Gov. Bill Richardson to run as a Hispanic. And, yes, it is giving me that chance.”
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Senator Barack Obama joined Representative John Lewis in singing at church in Selma, Ala. on Sunday.Credit...Erik S. Lesser for The New York Times
Mr. Obama, before the commemoration march, praised both Clintons and said of the political campaign under way, “We don’t have time for other folks to divide us.”
Mr. Clinton, arguably the most cadence-blessed speaker of the three, half-joked Sunday afternoon that he had been bested by the other two. “All the good speaking has been done by Hillary and Senator Obama already — I’m just sort of bringing up the rear,” he said.
If Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton had one overarching theme in their remarks, it was the honoring of the civil rights movement that had contributed to their own rise in politics and quests for the nomination.
“We’re in the presence today of giants whose shoulders we stand on,” Mr. Obama said at the Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church. “People who battled on behalf not just of African-Americans but on behalf of all Americans, who battled for America’s soul, that shed blood, that endured taunts and torment.”
In a 35-minute address, interrupted repeatedly by applause and shouts of praise from worshipers, Mr. Obama said it was time for his generation to pick up the work of those who had toiled before. He said it was time for the “Joshua generation” — a biblical reference to the leader who succeeded Moses — to urge family and friends to shake their apathy to engage in politics and action.
“I know if cousin Pookie would vote, if brother Jethro would get off the couch and stop watching Sports- Center and go register some folks and go to the polls, we’d have a different kind of politics,” Mr. Obama said, the crowd rising to its feet. “Kick off your bedroom slippers, put on your marching shoes!”
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Bill Clinton was inducted into the Voting Rights Hall of Fame in Selma on Sunday as his wife and Representative John Lewis applauded.Credit...Erik S. Lesser for The New York Times
Down the street, meanwhile, the congregation warmly welcomed Mrs. Clinton, who blended personal anecdotes with a fluidly thematic set of remarks, in which she said the civil rights march “is not over yet.”
“We’ve got to stay awake, we’ve got to stay awake because we have a march to finish,” Mrs. Clinton said, “a march towards one America.”
Her voice rising, she said: “Poverty and growing inequality matter. Health care matters. The people of the Gulf Coast matter. Our soldiers matter. Our future matters.”
Both candidates, too, turned to stories from their past to show their connection to the civil rights movement.
Mr. Obama relayed a story of how his Kenyan father and his Kansan mother fell in love because of the tumult of Selma, but he was born in 1961, four years before the confrontation at Selma took place. When asked later, Mr. Obama clarified himself, saying: “I meant the whole civil rights movement.” He also acknowledged for the first time a recent revelation by a genealogist that his mother’s ancestors in Kentucky owned slaves, something reported by The Baltimore Sun last week.
“It turns out that her great-great-great-great-grandfather actually owned slaves,” Mr. Obama said before another audience, over breakfast, at George C. Wallace Community College. “That’s no surprise. That’s part of our tortured, tangled history.”
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As they gathered to commemorate the civil rights movement, the two presidential candidates competed for black voters.
Mrs. Clinton, meanwhile, recalled going with her church youth minister as a teenager in 1963 to hear the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. speak in Chicago. Yet, in her autobiography and elsewhere, Mrs. Clinton has described growing up Republican and being a “Goldwater Girl” in 1964 — in other words, a supporter of the presidential candidacy of Senator Barry M. Goldwater, who opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
After the services, the senators were joined on the steps of the Brown Chapel by Mr. Clinton, who flew to Selma to campaign with his wife and be inducted into the National Voting Rights Hall of Fame.
Indeed, the start of the re-enactment march was delayed as a crowd swarmed around Mr. Clinton, who smiled and hugged his admirers, a few of whom were even wearing Obama buttons.
Mary Broadnax, 52, was walking closely behind, absorbing a moment she would never have imagined growing up in nearby Montgomery. After hearing Mr. Obama speak, she said she would do whatever she could to see him win the presidency.
“I love Bill Clinton, but if he came up to me and asked me to support Hillary, I would have to say I’m sorry,” Ms. Broadnax said, pausing before unspooling a long string of attributes about Mr. Obama. “He’s the right man for our time.”
The two political rivals, followed by large entourages and curious onlookers, had come to Selma three days before the anniversary of Bloody Sunday, a violent afternoon near the Edmund Pettus Bridge that became a turning point in the American civil rights movement. Dozens of congressmen and other elected officials also came for the ceremonies; among them was a House leader, Representative Rahm Emanuel, who represents the same state as Mr. Obama, was a former aide to Mr. Clinton and went to church Sunday with Mrs. Clinton. He has not endorsed anyone in the race.
As they re-enacted the 1965 march, making their way to the Alabama River, the Clintons were at the front of the assembly, while Mr. Obama was often only two people away, separated by John Lewis and Artur Davis, the Democratic congressmen from Georgia and Alabama. They were all linked arm in arm throughout as they slowly moved forward on the two-mile walk.
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