Obama, Clinton evoke memories of Martin Luther

“I walked into my dorm room and took my book bag and hurled across the room. It felt like everything has been shattered and we’d never be able to put the pieces together,” she said an emotionally choked voice.

She chose to speak in the church in Memphis where King had delivered his last sermon a day before he was assassinated on April 4, 1968. And it was here she announced that she would create the post of a Czar for the poor for whom King had fought.

“He never gave up and neither should we,” she said.

Clinton needs to do more, analysts said, to win black votes whom she had annoyed by saying some time ago that King was not solely responsible for improvement in civil rights.

In contrast to her emotional address, Obama, first black candidate to reach this far, called for fulfilling the dream of King for economic justice, something which he said is still out the reach of many Americans.

But McCain was booed by some in the audience as he apologized for voting against creating a federal holiday in the memory of King in 1983 in the House of Representatives.

“I was wrong,” he said, standing in pouring rain outside Lorraine where King was murdered. “We forgive you,” said some in the audience. But later he had supported a holiday in the memory of King in his home state of Arizona.