Clinton, Obama to Speak in Selma Sunday
An event steeped in civil rights symbolism offers rivals Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama an opportunity to show unity with the black community while they spar over support from a crucial Democratic constituency. The two leading candidates for the 2008 presidential nomination are scheduled to give nearly simultaneous speeches behind church pulpits just half a block apart from each other in Selma, Ala., on Sunday, according to the Associated Press and other news organizations.
The events will commemorate the 42nd anniversary of the bloody civil rights march there that helped rollback segregation in the American South. Later, the candidates will join civil rights leaders, public officials and others in what has become an annual walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where state troopers stopped civil rights marchers in 1965, turning them back using nightsticks and tear gas.
Alabama officials estimate that blacks make up between 40 percent and 50 percent of the state's Democratic vote, so any candidate who can capture the bloc would likely win the state. The Rev. Jesse Jackson won the state's primary in 1988.
Rep. James Thomas, a Democrat and former president of the National Black Caucus of State Legislators, predicted that Clinton, Obama and former North Carolina senator John Edwards would split the black vote.