WASHINGTON -- Rep. John Lewis, whose political career grew out of the civil rights movement, had longed for the day he could vote for someone he thought could become the nation's first black president. So when Sen. Barack Obama entered the race, he was on the cusp of declaring his support.
Until Bill Clinton called.
Now, Lewis said, he is agonizing over whether to choose Obama, whom he once described as "the future of the Democratic Party," or Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.
"One day I lean one way; the next day I lean another way," said Lewis, a Georgia Democrat. "Sometimes, you have to have what I call an executive session with yourself, a come-to-Jesus meeting, and somehow, some way, we will all have to make a decision."
In the opening stretch of the 2008 Democratic presidential contest, Clinton, Obama and John Edwards, the former North Carolina senator, are embroiled in what party officials believe is one of the most competitive scrambles for black supporters since the Voting Rights Act was passed four decades ago.
The chief rivals will be in Alabama today when the Clintons and Obama commemorate the 42nd anniversary of Bloody Sunday, when hundreds of activists - Lewis among them - crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge during a civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery.
Rep. Artur Davis, an Alabama Democrat, invited Obama to deliver the keynote address at the historic Brown Chapel today. After Obama agreed, Davis said, Hillary Clinton suddenly accepted an invitation to speak at a church down the street. Two days ago, Bill Clinton said he would join his wife in Selma, the first time since she formally entered the race that he has been called on to give her a hand.
"Her timing speaks for itself," said Davis, who supports Obama.
Today's events will be the first time for Hillary Clinton and Obama to share campaign turf. Aides to Clinton dismissed suggestions that they were following Obama, but members of Congress traveling to Selma said they were encouraged by her allies to attend her speech, not his.
Edwards declined an invitation. He plans to be in California today to deliver a speech - about Selma and civil rights - at the University of California, Berkeley.
Black voters are a crucial component of the Democratic electorate. In 2004, despite intensive efforts by President Bush to break the Democratic dominance, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts won about 89 percent of the black vote.
