WASHINGTON
The struggles of the nation’s blacks a loyal Democratic voting bloc topped the agenda Thursday as the party’s eight presidential candidates gathered for their third primary debate.
The debate at Howard University was scheduled to begin just hours after the Supreme Court ruled against public school programs aimed at achieving racial diversity, a certain topic for the event.
Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton said the decision turned its back on the promise of integrated schools that the court laid out 53 years ago in its landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education.
“As president, I will fight to restore Brown’s promise and create an education system where all children have an equal chance to learn and excel together,” she said in a statement.
Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois called the ruling “wrong-headed.”
It is “but the latest in a string of decisions by this conservative bloc of justices that turn back the clock on decades of advancement and progress in the struggle for equality,” he said.
