Date: Thursday, April 24, 2008
By: Sherrel Wheeler Stewart, BlackAmericaWeb.com

When he arrived this week in the rural Alabama town of Camden, presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain was met by the world famous Gee's Bend Quilters and others clapping and singing “Do Lord (Remember Me).”

McCain acknowledged in his two-day visit to Alabama's Black Belt that Republican support in the area has not been strong. Still, he pledged to be the president of all of the people.

While in the Black Belt, McCain stood at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, where blacks in 1965 were beaten back by police as they attempted to march to Montgomery to demand their right to vote. He rode across the Alabama River on the Gee's Bend Ferry, along with the quilters and others. The ferry was shut down for 44 years, closed initially because white leaders in Camden wanted to prevent blacks from coming to town to push for civil rights. Without the ferry, the trip to town was 80 miles for the blacks who lived in Gee's Bend.

While there, McCain sang along with the quilters, elders whose quilts have beem made through the years from cloth remnants, icons who have shown the world a swath of Deep South culture. McCain even bought three of the large quilts, writing a personal check for more than $14,000, according to published reports. On Monday afternoon, he went on to Birmingham for two fundraisers.

"I am aware of the challenges, and I am aware of the fact that there will be many people who will not vote for me, but I'm going to be the president of all the people," he said while in the Black Belt.

Jeff Sadosky, a spokesman for the McCain campaign, said the senator wants to show that when he governs “he will not just be the president for 51 percent of the people.

“He’s aware that some of the people he talks with will not vote for him. He still wants to hear their views. He wants to have a dialogue.”

McCain is now taking his "It's Time for Action" Tour to Louisiana’s Ninth Ward, where he will join that state’s Republican governor, Bobby Jindal, for a walk-through.

In a political season where Democratic presidential hopefuls still are fighting for the nomination, McCain is either positioning himself as an alternate choice in November or covering himself from charges of racial insensitivity, said University of San Francisco political scientist James Taylor.

“Hillary and Bill Clinton have been so reckless, throwing just about everything they can at Barack Obama,” Taylor told BlackAmericaWeb.com. “If it is perceived that the nomination was stolen from Obama, we will see a fundamental dealignment of blacks in the Democratic Party,” Taylor said. “They would take a step back and punish Hillary Clinton. And no Democrat has been elected president without 85 percent of the black vote. Hillary Clinton has lost the support of blacks. Barack got 92 percent of the black vote on Tuesday in Pennsylvania.”

Taylor predicts that given the right scenario, a Republican like McCain could get as much as 30 percent of the black vote.

“No Republican president has had that type of support from blacks since Richard Nixon,” he said. “McCain would be a formidable opponent.”

By going into areas such as Selma, Gee's Bend, and the Ninth Ward, McCain is attepting to show that he is not anti-black, observers say. His move on Wednesday to ask North Carolina Republicans not to run an anti-Obama advertisement that injects race by looping in comments from his former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, also shows that McCain wants to be viewed as a different kind of Republican, Taylor said.

Black Republicans in Alabama applauded his decision to campaign at historic places and meet people along the way.

“It was a smart move,” said Richard Finley, former president of the Alabama Republican Council.

Finley, a Birmingham political consultant, is optimistic about the potential of a Republican presidential candidate in November.

"Sen. McCain knows what we have done here. Gov. (Bob) Riley carried 25 percent of the black vote in his last race -- through out the state," Finley told BlackAmericaWeb.com. "If he can get more blacks working in his campaign, he can attract some votes."

Blacks in Alabama, he said, are concerned about economic issues. "They want jobs. They want housing. That comes with industry, not welfare," Finley said.

Longtime Alabama Republican Joe Dickson said he too will support McCain, but he said he's a realist. "Barack Obama will be our next president," said Dickson, a 75-year-old civil rights foot soldier.

"McCain will get some votes among black voters in Alabama, but he has to say some things differently," said Dickson, a former black newspaper publisher who at one time served in the cabinet of a Republican Alabama governor.

"He has to talk about getting us out of the 100-year war. He has to discontinue the Bush administration tax cuts," Dickson said. "Already, this country is in too much debt."

While McCain was greeted with hugs and handshakes, some in the Gee's Bend crowd said it wasn't enough to sway their Democratic leanings.

"I thank the Lord for McCain coming here," said quilter Mary Lee Bendolph. But she symbolized the challenge facing McCain. Bendolph admitted she likes Obama best.

"He come, to me, just like Martin Luther King," Bendolph said, "not just for one race, but all the races."

On Sunday, at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the Arizona senator described in vivid detail the clubbing that fractured the skull of John Lewis, now a Democratic congressman from Georgia. McCain, who speaks often of courage shown by military veterans, said he never saw greater courage than Lewis and the marchers showed that day, March 7, 1965.

"There must be no forgotten places in America, whether they have been ignored for long years by the sins of indifference and injustice, or have been left behind as the world grew smaller and more economically interdependent," McCain said outside the St. James Hotel, several hundred yards away from the historic bridge.

Earlier this month, McCain was in Memphis for the observance of the 40th anniversary or the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. He was booed at one point, but he was there, Taylor said.

McCain's home state, Arizona, was the last to establish a state holiday to honor King, and he was still opposed to it when they made the move, said Taylor. 

“He’s been trying," he added, "to show that he can take the high road.”

--- Associated Press contributed to this story.