Candidates court black vote on King anniversary

By Steve Holland

MEMPHIS (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate John McCain and Democrat Hillary Clinton tried to shore up support among black voters on Friday in the city where civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was slain 40 years ago.

Democrat Barack Obama honored King's legacy with a speech in Indiana while his rivals attended activities in Memphis marking the anniversary of the day King was gunned down as he stood on a Lorraine Motel balcony.

"I think it's important to spread the message that Dr. King's work is unfinished in places like Indiana and North Dakota," Obama, who would be the first black U.S. president, told reporters in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

As a steady downpour soaked a crowd outside the Lorraine Motel, Arizona Sen. McCain got a mixed greeting at a meeting of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

A couple of people shouted "no more war" as McCain, an Iraq war supporter, was introduced. There were scattered boos as McCain said "I was wrong" for voting against creating a federal King holiday while he was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives in 1983.

Others shouted, "We forgive you."

McCain, who will face Obama or Clinton in the November U.S. presidential election, noted that he had afterward supported a King holiday in his home state of Arizona.

"We can all be a little late sometimes in doing the right thing, and Dr. King understood this about his fellow Americans," McCain said.