April 4 (Bloomberg) -- Presidential candidates John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama paid homage to the civil rights movement today as part of commemorations marking the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination.

Democrat Clinton and Republican McCain attended events in Memphis, Tennessee, where King was slain in 1968. Obama, a Democrat and the first black candidate with a serious chance of winning the presidency, addressed King's legacy in a speech in Indiana.

King's death ``left a wound on the soul of our nation that has not yet fully healed,'' Obama said in Fort Wayne. He preached the gospel of brotherhood, equality and justice.''

Speaking at the Mason Temple in Memphis, site of King's last speech, Clinton said King inspired her to ``confront a world bigger and broader than the one I inhabited'' and opened the way for this year's historic presidential campaign.

``Because of him, after 219 years and 43 presidents who have been white men, this next generation will grow up taking for granted that a woman or a black man can be president of the United States of America,'' Clinton said.

She said that to fulfill King's dream, the next president should appoint a Cabinet-level position ``solely devoted to ending poverty in America'' and focusing attention on the issue.

McCain also vowed to ``make the eradication of poverty a top priority of the McCain Administration,'' he said in an e- mailed statement.

`Right Thing'

McCain said he regrets the vote he cast in 1983 as a freshman House member against a federal holiday to honor King. ``I was wrong,'' McCain said today.

``We can all be a little late sometimes in doing the right thing,'' he said. King ``was not a man to flinch from harsh truth, and the same is required of all who come here to see where he was in the last hours of his life.''

McCain and Clinton have ``political and symbolic reasons'' for making a pilgrimage to Memphis, said Michael Genovese, chairman of the Institute for Leadership Studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. ``If you're Hillary Clinton or John McCain, you don't want to animate the opposition vote by African-Americans.''

The stakes are highest for Clinton, a senator from New York. Obama so far has won the support of about 90 percent of black voters in Democratic primaries, and they have been crucial to his victories in southern states. They also are a constituency that Democrats will need to motivate in a closely contested general election.

Mending Fences

Clinton is seeking to mend fences with the black community after comments made by her husband, former President Bill Clinton, and a supporter, former vice presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro, brought accusations that her campaign was trying to exploit racial divisions.

Obama, an Illinois senator who has made racial unity a theme of his campaign, also has been touched by a controversy over race after excerpts of sermons by his former pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright Jr., were broadcast on television and distributed over the Internet. In those, Wright is heard saying ``God damn America'' and ``U.S. of KKKA.''

Obama, 46, condemned Wright's statements in an address on race on March 18. Today, he told reporters in Fort Wayne that it was ``a fairly fulsome speech on the state of race relations.''

Clinton, 60, was asked yesterday whether she brings up the controversy over Wright when lobbying the party's superdelegates, Democratic officials and officeholders whose votes may determine the nomination.

``I think most people have made up their minds about what they think about it,'' she said in California. ``Certainly it was, as you recall, very heavily in the news, and people you know sometimes have it on their minds.''

While in Memphis, McCain, 71, addressed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which King, a minister, helped found in 1957. McCain adviser Steve Schmidt said the speech ``is not political. This is a remembrance of Dr. King.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Lorraine Woellert in Washington at lwoellert@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: April 4, 2008 17:18 EDT