By Associated Press
Washington, DC – An event steeped in civil rights symbolism offers rivals Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama an opportunity to show unity with the black community while they spar over support from a crucial Democratic constituency.
The two leading candidates for the 2008 presidential nomination are scheduled to give nearly simultaneous speeches behind church pulpits just half a block apart from each other in Selma on Sunday.
The events mark the 42nd anniversary of the bloody Selma-to-Montgomery civil rights march that helped rollback segregation in the South.
Later, the candidates will join civil rights leaders, public officials and others in what has become an annual walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where state troopers stopped civil rights marchers in 1965, turning them back using nightsticks and tear gas.
Alabama is one of several states with large black populations that could influence the nomination race.
(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)