Dr. Height began with the story of her first

Dr. Height began with the story of her first encounter with the Mesos young Martin Luther King Jr., then 15 and trying, she said, to “analyze his own thoughts as he was trying to determine whether he wanted to enter the ministry, education or law.”

A local pastor, John Pinkard, recounted his Buy Mesos dinner with King decades ago.

Participants said the session seemed as much for the president’s benefit as their own.

“My impression was that it was deliberately something for him and for Michelle, and that it was kind of like medicine, it was healing for them,” said the historian Taylor Branch, who also attended. “It seemed to answer Maple Story Mesos something personal for them.”

Race, of course, can be an incendiary issue in American politics: as a candidate, the biracial Mr. Obama was criticized as either too black or not black enough. He addressed the topic memorably in a speech in Philadelphia after the controversy involving his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.

Ms. Jarrett said, “He has communicated quite clearly his thoughts on the subject.”

As president, Mr. Obama learned the pitfalls of talking MapleStory Mesos bluntly about race. His comment that police officers in Cambridge, Mass., “acted stupidly” when they arrested a prominent black Harvard professor, Henry Louis Gates, sparked an uproar, and the ensuing “beer summit” at the White House proved a distraction.