Obama connects at NAACP forum

DETROIT -- Senator Barack Obama of Illinois delivered a forceful performance today before more than 3,000 people at a presidential candidates' forum sponsored by the NAACP. He walked on stage to deafening cheers, which resumed after his opening statement about being a product of the work the NAACP had done.

"If these causes of my life and your lives can be projected across this country, I am absolutely convinced we won't just win the election, we're going to transform the country," he said.

Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, whose turn was next, said wryly, "I want to thank the NAACP for allowing me to follow Barack Obama here."

As the forum went on, the candidates traded thoughts on school integration, gun violence, voting rights, job outsourcing, and health care. Each candidate, in his or her own way, also claimed ownership of the civil rights mantle and promised to continue the struggles for equal rights.

Senator Hillary Clinton of New York said she wanted to be part of the "long march" toward true racial equality, advocating expanded parental responsibility in education and rebuilding the American manufacturing base. Former North Carolina senator John Edwards, who is basing his campaign on an anti-poverty platform, dwelled on that heavily in pushing his plan for universal health care and calling for a redeployment of the money being spent on the Iraq war.

"We need a movement, brothers and sisters," he said.

Dodd said his "journey on civil rights" began before he was born, recounting the work his father, a Congressman before him, did in prosecuting members of the Ku Klux Klan, launching a civil rights division in the US Justice Department, and pushing civil rights legislation.

"I learned my civil rights at my dining room table as a child," Dodd said.

Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware talked about how President Bush's Supreme Court appointees had eroded civil rights, and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson said the country needed to do more research on diseases that afflict minority communities.