Black Leaders Torn Over Endorsement

The ADC endorsement provides Clinton with a ready-made political operation that reaches 40 percent of Democratic primary voters, a potentially huge advantage. "Historically, very few candidates have won competitive primaries like this without the assistance of ADC," said Joe Turnham, chairman of the Alabama Democratic Party. "Right now it's the political gem of the process, at least on our side."

Obama, meanwhile, has started from scratch in Alabama. The campaign only recently opened three offices there, and Gray is launching outreach efforts that target groups the ADC has tended to overlook, including students at historically black colleges. One reason Obama did not get the ADC endorsement is that unlike Clinton, he did not ask for it.

Thanks to Reed, Clinton's name will appear on the canary-yellow ADC sample ballot distributed in churches the Sunday before Election Day and handed to black voters as they approach the polls. Space on the ADC ballot is so valuable that candidates, including Clinton, pay to be listed on it.

"You pay what we call your fair share," Reed explained. "Kind of like the United Way."

But Gray, who served as the ADC's field director for 30 years until he retired this summer, is not so sure it will work this time.

"They're going to rely on the endorsement sample ballot," Gray said of the ADC. "I said to Joe Reed months ago, with a candidate like Barack Obama, you're not going to get that kind of commitment from black voters."

Obama's Alabama campaign chairman is Rep. Artur Davis, who beat Reed's longtime friend Rep. Earl Hilliard in a 2002 Democratic primary.

"The reality is, Joe has evolved from a time when blacks had no political influence in the state and were the whipping boys in every campaign, to a time when blacks have a significant influence and when whites are now willing to vote for black candidates," Davis said. "But when you've had to live that transition, you're naturally going to have a skepticism about how far we've come."

The ADC was founded in 1960 by a group of lawyers, professors and labor leaders to back the Kennedy-Johnson ticket, and in 1970, it chose Reed, a 29-year-old education activist, as its chairman. Former governor George Wallace called the group the "Black Bloc," and Republican candidates still use images of Reed in ads to disparage their Democratic opponents. "Even today, the politics of race is very prevalent," Reed said.

When Bill Clinton won the presidency, Reed paid numerous visits to the White House and served on a state patronage committee that recommended federal nominees.

"He was in and out of the White House telling us what do to all the time," the former first lady said of Reed when she appeared before ADC delegates earlier this month to ask for their endorsement.

"In this business, there's a thing called gratitude," Reed said. "The Clintons have been identified with our cause. So it's that backdrop, it's that commitment. Is there anything wrong with the rest of them? No." Obama, he added, "has got all the qualifications. But he ain't going to be nominated."

Obama's backers are not intimidated. State Sen. Quinton T. Ross Jr., a high school principal who beat Reed five years ago by running a campaign similar to the one Gray is organizing for Obama, targeting younger black voters.

"It was student against teacher," Ross said of the tactics he learned from Reed. "And he just taught me well."