Obama inspires hope, worry

Clarece Coney answers the phone in her home near the corner of George Washington and Martin Luther King avenues in Canton, Miss. "I'm crippled, sick and kind of old," she says.

But of late, Coney also feels rejuvenated, thanks to Sen. Barack Obama, the Illinois Democrat running for president.

"He's not the same old thing; everybody seems to like him, black and white," says Coney, who knows history when she sees it.

In 1966, she opened her home to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Stokely Carmichael and 135 other civil-rights marchers when they were tear-gassed by police on the Memphis-to-Jackson march while attempting to make camp across the street.

Obama is "a beautiful guy, a beautiful guy," she says. "I hope and pray he can make it, but there are a lot of evil people out there in the world. ... I don't want him to get hurt."

On Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2008, amid a presidential campaign without precedent, Obama's candidacy is inspiring a tender mix of pride, exhilaration and foreboding.

Almost 40 years after King's assassination, the streets that bear his name are alive with hope that Obama may fulfill King's dream, but also fraught with fear that he could suffer King's fate. Each step of the way, Obama's progress is being measured against an ingrained belief that, in the end, "America" won't let a black man become president.

"The Bible says a hope deferred makes the heart sick, and every Negro in America can understand that our hopes have been dashed every year since this country's been here for 400 years," says Bishop Fred Caldwell, pastor of Greenwood Acres Full Gospel Church in Shreveport, La.

"Barack Obama is a phenomenal individual who no doubt is riding the crest of those that have gone before," Caldwell says. No matter. "There are folks in this country who want this place to stay white and at the end of the day, we are going to end up with the same old same old."

Campaigning in South

Obama took to the pulpit at Martin Luther King Jr.'s Ebenezer Baptist Church on the eve of the federal holiday marking the civil-rights hero's birth 79 years ago. He based his speech on King's quote that "Unity is the great need of the hour."

"The divisions, the stereotypes, the scapegoating, the ease with which we blame the plight of ourselves on others, all of that distracts us from the common challenges we face: war and poverty; inequality and injustice," Obama said. "We can no longer afford to build ourselves up by tearing each other down. We can no longer afford to traffic in lies or fear or hate. It is the poison that we must purge from our politics; the wall that we must tear down before the hour grows too late."

South Carolina is the first state where a large number of black voters will participate, and Obama needs a win Saturday to remain a front-runner in the race for the party's nomination. He won the leadoff contest in Iowa, and lost New Hampshire and Nevada to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Obama is counting on blacks to stick with him. He lost Nevada despite winning 83 percent of blacks, who made up 15 percent of the total vote. In South Carolina, they are expected to make up more than half the turnout.

Obama's campaign has worked to overcome concerns among black voters that he wouldn't be able to win an election in white America. But his poll numbers leapt among blacks after his victory in practically all-white Iowa.

Three months ago, Shanaya Hammond, a beauty-shop owner in Charleston, S.C., was a somewhat reluctant Obama supporter.

No more. She is all in for Obama now, having been convinced after the senator from Illinois won the Iowa Democratic caucuses that America is ready to vote for a black man for president. "I was like, OK, it's happening for us," said Hammond, 32, a single mother of three. "At first, you're wishing, you're hoping and praying, and now it's like, OK, we have a chance. Other people are willing to vote for him."

Hammond sits at the crossroads of Saturday's primary here. She's a woman, and therefore critical to Clinton's hopes of winning, and she's African American, and thus crucial to Obama's chances.

Uplifting image

For Paul Knauls Jr., who runs a family beauty and barber shop in Portland, Obama is an "uplifting" alternative to the steady stream of media images of black people as errant athletes and rappers run amok.

"I think he's changing the thinking in America," Knauls says. "You got a guy who went to Iowa and won. That's huge."

In Obama's hometown of Chicago, Haki Madhubuti — founder of Third World Press, which published the best-seller "The Covenant With Black America" — theorizes why.

Madhubuti, a poet and professor at Chicago State University, got his graduate degree in Iowa. And, as he explains, "the less contact you have with black people, the less you know us, the less you fear us and, of course, you get an articulate brown-skinned family man with a wife who's an articulate lawyer also and you say, 'Wow, this could work.' "

Still, Madhubuti fears for Obama's life and psyche: "It's going to get rotten and small and ragged out there. I don't have my hopes up at all."

Violence

For some, the very strength of Obama's campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination has dragged the thought of violence out of the shadows of the unspeakable.

Joseph Solomon Jones, 25, held in the same thought high hopes and pure fatalism about the Obama campaign.

"He's very educated, very fluent in what the people want," said Jones, a college student in Brooklyn. "Obama, I want him to be president. First black president, all right, I'll take that. Even though he's going to get shot after that."

Modern history does not permit such worries to be brushed off, regardless of whether the source of danger is seen as some dark unnamed force, or simply a deranged person driven to lash out at a Kennedy or a King, a Wallace or a Reagan.

Alma Powell, the wife of Colin Powell, spoke bluntly about her fears in 1995 when Powell was weighing a run for the Republican presidential nomination. "He would probably be at much more risk than any other candidate because of being a black man in this society," Powell said. "A lot of crazy people out there."

In a recent speech, Michelle Obama, the candidate's wife, lightly traced the twisting byways of that anxiety. "There are still voices, even within our own community, that focus on what might go wrong," she said in Atlanta. "It's not just about fear, people. It's also about love. I know people want to protect us and themselves from disappointment and failure, from the possibility of being let down again — not by us, but by the world as it is. A world that we fear might not be ready for a decent man like Barack."

April 4, 1968

Jesse Epps spent the late afternoon of April 4, 1968, in Room 306 of the Lorraine Motel, in Memphis, Tenn., talking with King about a march in support of the city's striking sanitation workers.

Just a week before, an earlier march turned into a bedlam, with stores looted, the crowd gassed, and King hustled into a car by aides. For King, the event had been an embarrassing, dispiriting rout. He came back to Memphis to salvage the strikers' cause and his reputation.

Seated in that $13-a-day room, Epps, a labor organizer, assured King that this time all the churches in town were rallying behind the strikers.

They wound up their meeting, and King declined an invitation to dine with Epps. He was already due at the home of a minister for supper. He washed up, knotted a fresh tie. A few of his people were in the parking lot outside, so he stepped onto the balcony outside Room 306 to tell them about the dinner plans. A single shot brought him down.

For Epps, who was instrumental in persuading King to come to Memphis for the sanitation workers, the history of that moment leads him not to worries, but to strategy.

"When they cut down the leader, the work is going to go on," he said. "Get rid of Mrs. Clinton, you have Mr. Obama. You get rid of both of them, you get Mr. [John] Edwards. A flock of geese will move to protect the lead goose from the hunter."

Information from The Associated Press is included in this report

Saturday: South Carolina primary (Democrats only).

Jan. 29: Florida primary (GOP only).

Feb. 5: Super Tuesday.

Feb. 9: Washington caucuses

Feb. 19: Washington primary