By Debbi Wilgoren and Manny Fernandez
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, April 1, 2003; 3:19 PM

Several thousand affirmative action supporters, many who had traveled by bus overnight, converged at a rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court building in Northeast Washington this morning as the justices in their solemn chambers heard cases challenging the University of Michigan's race conscious admissions policies.

The crowd included contingents from a number of colleges, including Boston College, Harvard, Penn State, University of California at Berkeley, Georgetown and Howard University, labor activists, religious leaders and some extended families from around the country. But there was a large contingent from Michigan, where civil rights leaders had organized bus convoys to bring in protesters today. The majority of the activists were African American, but there were also significant numbers of whites and Hispanics. Many of the people wore signs around their neck saying "Save Affirmative Action."

After the Supreme Court session ended, the crowd marched to the Lincoln Memorial.

Ed Bell, 47, a pastor at Souls for Christ Church in Detroit, came with his wife on one of the bus caravans. "It's an important day because I have grandchildren," he said.

A few steps away stood Alexis Olive, 18, a University of Michigan student who bobbed a "Diversity Rocks" sign in the air. "Affirmative action is very important in getting more minorities in college," she said, adding that "34 years ago we were fighting to be integrated in the schools and now we're trying to defend our right to be at school."

Some made the trip a family affair. Among those who travelled to Washington from Detroit in a 60 bus convoy, was Berline Brown, her husband, sister, brother, cousin, two children and several nieces and nephews Asked why she came, she pointed her finger at the children, stopping with the youngest, 6-year-old D'Andre' Herron, her nephew. "So our kids will be given the opportunity," Brown said. "To level the field."

She said affirmative action allowed her generation better access to education, as well as her two children, both of whom attended colleges in Detroit that once did not accept minorities. Her husband is an engineer and supervisor for Ford Motor Co.-opportunities, she said, that he would never have received without preference programs.

Kenneth Simmons, a senior at the College of Wooster south of Cleveland and vice president of the black student association there, organized a racially mixed group of about 50 students to come stand up for what he called one of the most important causes they will face in their lifetime.

He said he was motivated in part because of conversations he had with his grandparents years ago about how much they regretted not being able to attend the 1963 March on Washington. "My grandparents didn't come and to the day that they died they wished that they had," he said.

Patrick Kenney, 22, a senior at Boston College who is white, said he too felt this is an important moment. "It is my fight," he said. "My brother is in Iraq. . . . I'm down here making sure all the principles he's fighting for are still in existence here."

The rally speakers included the Rev. Al Sharpton and Martin Luther King III. The Rev. Jesse Jackson also addressed the crowd, saying that with 900,000 black men in jail and only 600,000 in college, the decision being made by the court was pivotal to the civil rights movement. "We must fight this fight . . . using our marching feet," he said. He then encouraged the crowd to join him in chanting, "The struggle is not over."

Some in the crowd held antiwar signs and some speakers made anti-war references in the speeches, but the issue of affirmative action dominated.

A young man stood with a few others holding a sign reading "Saddam Must Go" A young woman nearby looked at the men and said, "They're at the wrong protest."

But Rev. Wendell Anthony, president of the Detroit NAACP, used the war to help rally the crowd. "If we can build democracy over there [in Iraq]," he said, "we must also maintain democracy over here."

"Dr. King said it well," he added, "when he said, 'If you start a man out in the race of life 300 years behind, it takes him more than 30 years to catch up.' We have come too far to be turned back now."