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'US keen for black president'
18/02/2007 11:01 - (SA)
Orangeburg, South Carolina - White House hopeful Barack Obama, taking a fellow black lawmaker to task, said voters are ready to elect a black US president.
"At every turn in our history, there's been somebody who said we can't," the Democratic senator from Illinois told a nearly all-black audience of about 2 000 at Claflin University on Saturday.
"Some people said we can't do this, we can't do that, so we shouldn't even try. If I have your support, if I have your energy and involvement and commitment and ideas, then I'm here to tell you, 'Yes we can."'
The comments drew the loudest ovation during a question-and-answer session in his first campaign swing through South Carolina, an early voting state in the Democratic primaries.
The first-in-the-South contest here is seen as a test of candidates' abilities to reach black voters. Half of the state's Democratic primary voters are black.
Obama responded to comments this past week by Democratic state senator Robert Ford of Charleston, South Carolina, who helped mobilise black voters for former North Carolina senator John Edwards in 2004, but has switched to Hillary Rodham Clinton in the 2008 presidential race.
Ford said on Tuesday that Obama, a first-term senator, has much to prove. "The media made this guy bigger than life," Ford said. "This guy isn't tested and they made him a rock star."
Ford said one reason he was supporting Clinton, the New York senator, is that he is sceptical Obama can win the presidency and worries his nomination could hurt other Democratic candidates.
"Every Democrat running on that ticket next year would lose - because he's black and he's top of the ticket. We'd lose the house and the senate and the governors and everything," Ford said.
Ford drew widespread criticism for his comment and later apologised.
US house majority whip Jim Clyburn, a South Carolina Democrat, introduced Obama, saying "Run, Barack, run."
"Obama is able to run today because Rosa Parks sat down," Clyburn said. "He is able to run today because Septima Clark stood up."
- AP
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