Lewis Says He Will Back Hillary Clinton for President if She Runs

Representative John Lewis, the Georgia Democrat and elder statesman of the civil rights movement, said in an interview that he would support Hillary Rodham Clinton if she sought the White House in 2016, and called her “the most qualified person in America to be president.”

Mr. Lewis, a longtime Clinton ally, famously abandoned Mrs. Clinton in 2008 to cast his vote as a Democratic convention superdelegate for Barack Obama, a move that was significant because of Mr. Lewis’s standing as a leader among African-Americans. He cited a “sense of movement and a sense of spirit” around the Obama candidacy.

His new remarks about Mrs. Clinton, which he insisted were not an endorsement, are the first time he has weighed in on the 2016 race. He spoke during a lengthy interview in his office in Washington, during which he reflected on race relations in America today, and the upcoming 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, which he helped organize.

“I won’t make an endorsement, but I will say this: If she makes a decision to run I would be with her,” Mr. Lewis said. “I think today she is the most qualified person in America to be president. No one has worked so hard or done a more effective job in representing this country as secretary of state in modern times.”

Mr. Lewis said the decision to endorse Mr. Obama in 2008 was “a tough decision, a hard decision,” because he had been so close to Mrs. Clinton and her husband, the former president, for so long. But, he said, he never felt any wrath. “They understood.”

Mr. Lewis remains a strong supporter of Mr. Obama, and said the president “did the right thing to speak out” after George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer in Florida, was acquitted in the racially charged shooting death of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed teenager. He said he did not ask Mr. Obama “directly to speak out,” but made his views known during a meeting between the president and members of the Congressional Black Caucus before the verdict.

While some black leaders have criticized Mr. Obama, especially earlier in his presidency, for not talking enough about race relations, Mr. Lewis said Mr. Obama’s public comments on race, including a speech he gave in Philadelphia while running for president, “made sense.” He used a line the White House has used to explain Mr. Obama’s thinking, saying, “He’s the president of all Americans, not just African-Americans.”

But Mr. Lewis, the sole surviving speaker from the 1963 March on Washington, also says Mr. Obama owes his presidency to the march, and the movement.

“If it hadn’t been for the March on Washington, the Civil Rights Act of ’64 the Voting Rights Act of 1965, for the leadership of Martin Luther King and the involvement of hundreds and thousands of other people,” Mr. Lewis said, “there would be no Barack Obama as president of the United States.”