Obama's speech - which contained his strongest words to date on race - came after days of controversy over remarks by his outspoken Chicago pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. Videos have circulated of Wright saying that the U.S. brought 9/11 on itself and that the nation is responsible for AIDS.

Before an audience of roughly 200 elected officials, religious leaders and campaign supporters at the National Constitution Center, the Illinois senator condemned Wright's remarks, while defending the man. He also acknowledged that he had heard Wright make controversial statements in sermons before.

"Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes," Obama said.

But the main goal of Obama's 40-minute address, was to discuss the scars on all Americans from years of racial conflict and to ask people to work together to change the future.

"Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity," Obama said.

Political analysts yesterday praised the address, which Obama reportedly revised late into the night, calling it a sophisticated and thoughtful effort. But they wondered whether the race issue will persist.

"The speech was remarkable. It's hard to imagine someone who could have given a better unity speech under the circumstances," said G. Terry Madonna, a political scientist at Franklin & Marshall College. "But the fundamental question is, does the issue go away?"

Until now, Obama has shied away from discussing racial politics at length in the campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. But University of Virginia historian and presidential pundit Larry Sabato said that while the Wright situation forced Obama's hand, he would have had to do this at some point.

"He was naive in believing he could run as a post-racial candidate, that he was going to be above it all," Sabato said.

Obama opened by reminding the audience that he is the son of a white woman from Kansas and a black man from Kenya, raised with the help of his white grandparents.

He used his own complicated family politics to show why he couldn't break with Wright - a man he described as a spiritual guide, friend and inspiration.

"I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community," Obama said. "I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe."

Tom Baldino, a political science professor at Wilkes University, praised that section of the speech.

"That's a pretty powerful statement," he said. "Many of us have members of our family that do embarrassing things."

Obama then delved into the racial landscape of modern America, talking about the bitter civil rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s and anger in the African-American community over the lingering effects of discrimination.

"That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or in the beauty shop or around the kitchen table," Obama said. "And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews."

Obama described his church - Trinity United Church of Christ - as a place where, like other black churches, members come from all walks of life and "services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America."

Madonna questioned whether Obama went far enough to explain Wright's church - given the inflammatory statements.

"He tried to lay out how unique the African-American churches are and how diverse," Madonna said. "That's a concept that works in part, but it doesn't explain the vitriol and the race hatred."

Obama did go on to say that many Americans have suffered, noting that there is also anger in white communities.

"Most working and middle-class white Americans don't feel they've been particularly privileged by their race," he said. "They've worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor."

Madonna said that Obama was trying to reach out to working-class voters, where he has less support.

"I do think that in these [recent] primaries and from here on in and in the general election, he's [got to be worried about] losing the support of white working class Democrats," Madonna said. "I think that's the point he tried to make about the immigrant experience."

The audience at the speech responded with murmurs, nods and several lengthy rounds of applause. How the public will react is less clear.

Madonna thought Obama's speech may at least quiet down the race issue.

"I think Democratic voters will accept his line of thinking and move beyond it," he said. "There aren't that many states to go anyway. I think it's probably run its course."

But Sabato noted that racial conflict will remain a problem, even if it moves out of the headlines.

"You don't change 400 years of racial history in America with a speech," he said.

Still, Sabato said it was better for Obama to do this now.

"I think . . . it helps Obama to have this conversation start now," he said. "The last thing you want to have is for this conversation to start in October. In October, a Democrat wants the conversation to be about Iraq and the economy." *