“I’m trying to get ready to endorse him, but my board is so split,” Clark-Frieson said. While letters to the paper are almost unanimously in favour of Obama, she said, the older of the state’s two black political organisations, the Alabama Democratic Conference, endorsed Hillary Clinton in October.

So great is the tension over the contest, Clark-Frieson said, that many of the newspaper’s board members have refused to betray their preferences even in private.

Across the South, a fierce competition is afoot for black voters, who are expected to constitute from 20 per cent to 50 per cent of voters in the South Carolina Democratic primary on January 26 and in the four Southern states with primaries on Super Tuesday — Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia and Arkansas. In many counties, registration has spiked since Obama won the Iowa caucuses, and election officials say that interest is at its highest point in several election cycles.

While the official ground game is just beginning, chatter about the two candidates — both of whom have substantial claims to African-American support — is constant on black radio shows, e-mail lists and at barbershops. Officials and ministers are coming forward with last-minute endorsements, and campaigns are buttering up the activity directors at senior centres.

Southern black voters are in knots over a contest that pits a woman they know well against a viable black candidate. If any election can prove that Southern blacks are not a monolithic voting bloc, it is this one.

The competition pits old loyalties against new passions, and traditional kingmakers — many of whom backed Clinton months ago — against Obama’s grass-roots energy.

In Atlanta, the race has also split old allies in the civil rights movement. Rev Joseph E Lowery supported Obama, for instance, while Republican John Lewis defended Clinton against accusations that she and her husband had denigrated Martin Luther King Jr in an attack on Obama.

Another prominent Clinton supporter from the civil rights era, Andrew Young, also went on the defensive. “Hillary Clinton, first of all, has Bill behind her” Young said on a recent webcast devoted to African-American issues. “And Bill is every bit as black as Barack.”

But a younger generation appears to be embracing Obama. Raphael G Warnock, the 38-year-old senior pastor of King’s home church, Ebenezer Baptist, extended Obama the honour of appearing there this Sunday, the day before the King holiday.

THE RACE

In S Carolina, Nevada

Republican Race

John McCain maintained a steady 7-point edge on Mike Huckabee, 29 per cent to 22 per cent, although rival and Mitt Romney gained three points overnight to climb into third place at 15 per cent. Both polls had a margin of error of 3.4 percentage points.

Democratic Race

Hillary Clinton holds a narrow 5-point lead on rival Barack Obama in Nevada on the eve of the state’s presidential nominating contest, according to a Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll