Obama, Clintons Campaign at Selma Events

Sunday March 4, 2007 4:31 PM


AP Photo ALRC103, ALJM102

By NEDRA PICKLER

Associated Press Writer

SELMA, Ala. (AP) - Barack Obama reached out to the civil rights generation Sunday on the anniversary of the Bloody Sunday march, saying the protesters helped pave the way for his campaign to become the first black president.

``I stand on the shoulders of giants,'' the Democratic senator from Illinois told hundreds at a breakfast to commemorate the 42nd anniversary of the clash between voting rights demonstrators and police.

He was just 3 when police with billy clubs bloodied blacks who tried to cross the bridge out of Selma on the way to Montgomery, the capital. On his first visit to Selma, Obama was coming face-to-face with Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton as the candidates seek support from the party's loyal black constituency.

Obama and Clinton, joined by the former president, planned to speak at the same time from pulpits three blocks apart. They also were to appear together at a rally before making the ceremonial walk to the Edmund Pettus Bridge to honor the Selma-to-Montgomery marches.

Those civil rights demonstrations, Obama said, reverberated across the globe and helped inspire his father growing up in Kenya to aspire to something beyond his job herding goats. His father came to Hawaii to get an education under a program for African students and met Obama's mother, a fellow student from Kansas. Her white family also was inspired for unity by the Selma marches.

``If it hasn't been for Selma, I wouldn't be here,'' Obama said. ``This is the site of my conception. I am the fruits of your labor. I am the offspring of the movement. When people ask me if I've been to Selma before, I tell them I'm coming home.''

At the breakfast, Obama got a key to the city and another to the county from a probate judge, Kim Ballard. ``Forty-two years ago he might would have needed it because I understand it would open the jail cells,'' Ballard said. ``But not today.''

Both Obama and Clinton, the New York senator, have a natural appeal among black voters. But they will have to work hard to win support because each is a formidable candidate.

U.S. Rep. Artur Davis, who introduced Obama at the breakfast, said blacks can tell their grandchildren they can be anything if Obama is inaugurated as president on Jan. 20, 2009.

``The moment that he is standing there will mean that we have a country that is free,'' said Davis, D-Ala.,

Other Democratic candidates are not leaving the black vote to Obama and Clinton.

John Edwards, the 2004 vice presidential nominee, was speaking about Selma and civil rights at the University of California, Berkeley.

``The fight for civil rights and equal rights and economic and social justice is more than just going to celebrations, even as wonderful as the one in Selma,'' Edwards said in remarks prepared for delivery later Sunday as he referred to Berkeley janitors' fight for a wage increase. ``The fight is going on right here, right now.''

Clinton's appeal among blacks is largely due to the popularity of her husband Bill - author Toni Morrisson once famously named him the ``first black president.''

Tracy Eatmon, 25, wore an Obama campaign T-shirt at the breakfast because, he said, the senator has the interest of young people in mind and would be a good representative of black leadership. Eatmon also likes Clinton and said he wished they would run together.

``I think Senator Clinton is also an excellent candidate, being the wife of Bill Clinton,'' said Eatmon, who is from Tuscaloosa, Ala. ``I think that definitely in my opinion helps her, from his experience.''

Bill Clinton was being inducted Sunday afternoon into Selma's Voting Rights Hall of Fame. Hillary Clinton had intended to appear on his behalf.

But as plans were being finalized late Thursday for the dueling Obama-Clinton appearances, the Clinton campaign announced the former president would make the ceremony after all. His spotlight-stealing attendance marked the first time the couple campaigned together since Hillary Clinton announced she was running for president.

The former president's induction was to take place at the foot of bridge where police attacked the protesters on March 7, 1965. On that day, hundreds of marchers had begun to walk from the Brown Chapel AME Church - where Obama was to deliver the keynote address Sunday - despite a ban on protest marches by then-Gov. George Wallace.

The protesters made it six blocks before mounted troopers attacked them with billy clubs, tear gas and bullwhips while white onlookers cheered. U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., who at the time was an activist who helped organized the mark, suffered a fractured skull.

Thousands flocked to Selma in support of the marchers. Martin Luther King Jr. led a separate march to the bridge two days later. On March 21, 1965, after a federal court overturned Wallace's ban, King led the five-day march to the capital.

President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law on Aug. 6, 1965. President Bush extended it last summer.
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