Experts: Plot detracts from race progress in South

SHADES of the US South’s racist past came creeping back this week just as the South could be poised to play a pivotal role in electing the nation’s first black president.

An alleged plot by two young white supremacists to go on a killing spree and assassinate Barack Obama, though far-fetched by most accounts, may conjure images of the Jim Crow era for some. But it doesn’t necessarily reflect the modern South, which in recent years has seen a huge influx of immigrants and transplants from other regions, as well as the empowerment of a black electorate that could decide Tuesday’s election.

“These incidents, isolated though they are, serve as a reality check,” said journalist John Seigenthaler, 81, who was US Attorney General Robert Kennedy’s administrative assistant and was attacked with the Freedom Riders during the Civil Rights era.