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In more recent years, former Gov. Terry Sanford lost the Tar Heel Democratic presidential primary in 1972 to Alabama Gov. George Wallace, a segregationist who made his name fighting school integration.

And then there was the Harvey Gantt/Jesse Helms U.S. Senate race of 1990. Helms, the Republican incumbent, was in a close race with Gantt, Charlotte's first black mayor, until airing a last-minute ad that showed a pair of white hands crumpling a rejection letter and blaming the job loss on affirmative action.

The mixture of race and politics doesn't happen only here. In 2006, black U.S. Senate candidate Harold Ford lost in Tennessee during a race in which his Republican opponent aired an ad showing a blonde white woman cooing "Call me." The ad referred to a Super Bowl party sponsored by Playboy magazine that Ford attended.

And it isn't just the South. In Pennsylvania's primary April 22, 13 percent of white Democrats told exit pollsters that race was a factor for them in the election. Among black Democrats, 4 percent said race was a factor.

U.S. Rep. Mel Watt, Gantt's campaign chairman and former leader of the Congressional Black Caucus, said publicly last year he feared America wasn't ready to elect a black man as president.

Watt reversed that view a month ago, endorsing Obama and saying he was "pleasantly surprised" at how whites have backed the Illinois senator. He sees a dichotomy between a younger age group, for which race is virtually no factor, and an older group, for which race is a personal and troubling issue.

Watt said last week he thinks voters will search their souls before casting votes against Obama.

"People are going to ask themselves, 'Do I want race to be a factor in this day and time? Or am I ready to move on?' " Watt said.

Race and TV ads

Racial undercurrents have affected other contests too -- and they can be used to manipulate black or white voters.

In the Democratic gubernatorial race, state treasurer Richard Moore linked Lt. Gov. Bev Perdue to the Ku Klux Klan in advertisements.

The N.C. Republican party aired commercials tying both Perdue and Moore to the Rev. Wright despite requests from McCain and the national Republican establishment to hold its fire.

"Although both parties claim they don't, they have racial overtones," Bacot said of the ads.

Among voters, some Clinton supporters in North Carolina say they would vote for McCain in November if Obama wins the nomination.

Greg Gallagher, 52, a construction worker who lives in Pamlico County, was so uncomfortable hearing about Obama's pastor that he worries about the candidate himself.

"The more I know, the less I like him," said Gallagher, who is white. "You listen to this guy -- it's not going to pull people together. It'll break them apart."

Duke University associate professor Kerry Haynie, co-director of the school's Center on Race, Ethnicity and Gender, said last week that Obama has been "racialized." The senator may draw skepticism from whites, Haynie said, if he is perceived as being popular among blacks.

Bev Barksdale, 48, a bartender in Oriental who worries most about health care, said she e-mailed Clinton last week advising the senator that black voters in Eastern North Carolina will come out for Obama.

"I said, 'You need to come further east.' In the counties, people are uninformed, uneducated and black," said Barksdale, who is white. "I'm not a racist, but I think a lot of black people are coming out to vote because of the race issue."

Like Gallagher, she would vote for McCain or not at all before casting a ballot for Obama. She said he has too little experience, and she doesn't think he's willing to pledge allegiance to the flag.

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