At that time, Hillary and Bill Clinton were getting a lot of flak for comments that they made, which offended some in the Obama camp and prompted a flurry of finger pointing about the roles of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and then President Lyndon Johnson over Congressional approval of the Civil Rights Act.

Let me see if I can re-visit that post today, because race has again surfaced in the Obama-Clinton battle, ironically, just as Mississippi voters were going to the polls..

The latest salvo came from a small newspaper in California, which did an interview with 1984 Democratic Vice Presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro that was printed last Friday.

The former New York Congresswoman said, "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position."

Now, if you want to break it down, Ferraro is saying that if Obama wasn't a black candidate pulling in so much of the black vote, he would be trailing Clinton for sure in this race.

You can probably make the case for that - in a purely analytical manner.

But the reaction of the Obama and Clinton camps to that interview showed again that race is not a simple issue, especially when viewed in the context of Obama's possibly historic place as the first ever black nominee for President in the Democratic Party.

A longtime friend of mine emailed me about the Ferraro quote last night, with the subject line: "Democrats Eat Their Young, Part MMMMXXXLLLVII."

If you're a Democrat, the last thing you want to see is a cleavage emerge in the party along racial lines, but that's sort of where this race has moved to.

In Mississippi, Obama won 9 of every 10 black votes. Clinton won 75% of the white vote, her highest such percentage so far.

Last week in Ohio, Hillary Clinton did very well among white voters, beating Obama by a substantial margin.

Obama only won five counties in the Buckeye State, winning in Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus and Cleveland, as he tends to win the cities while Clinton picks up the outer suburbs and farm country.

I still find it hard to fathom that Hillary Clinton is the consistent choice of Democrats in rural America. But it is obvious that Obama does not play well there. Is it because of his race?

Clinton right now is winning black votes at about the same rate that Republicans do in a general election for President. She probably has little chance to attract many more black voters in the remaining primary and caucus states.

This issue raises a lot of interesting questions for the current primary battle and for what might happen in November as well.

As for Ferraro, she lashed out at the Obama camp, accusing them of twisting her words, which she insisted were not meant as a racial slight.

"I am livid at this thing," she told the New York Times today. "Any time you say anything to anybody about the Obama campaign, it immediately becomes a racist attack."