WASHINGTON — In black America, oh, how the mighty have fallen.

Bill Clinton is no longer revered as the "first black president." Tavis Smiley's rapid-fire commentaries on a popular radio show have been silenced. And the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., self-described defender of the black church, has been derided by many on the Web as an old man who needs to "step off."

They all landed in the black community's doghouse after being viewed as endangering Sen. Barack Obama's chances of being elected president. And the community's desire to protect the first African American ever to be in this position may only grow with his win in North Carolina and his close loss in Indiana.

"I have parents who are still living who are very enthusiastic about Obama," said Valerie Grim, chair of Indiana University's Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies. "They live in Mississippi. For a time, my parents couldn't vote, and when they could, their only choice was a white person.

"This means more than just saying there's a black person on the ticket. It represents the things they had been denied. It's being able to see the unbelievable, that the impossible might be possible. It represents for them a new day, a new opportunity to see that black people can contribute, on the ultimate level, to the social order."

Given such sentiment, it has not taken much for other public figures to move from icon to pariah.

When Bill Clinton called Obama's position on Iraq a "fairy tale" in New Hampshire, "I think black people felt betrayed," said Andrea Plaid, a blogger who writes under the pen name the Cruel Secretary. African Americans continued to regard Clinton highly even after he was impeached for lying under oath. "And you turn around and do this to us?" Plaid said.

Smiley, the renowned black author and commentator, took issue with Obama for skipping his "Covenant With Black America" in New Orleans so he could campaign in Texas and Ohio.

The resulting backlash left Smiley feeling "hammered" and "barbequed" by black Americans.

"There's all this talk of 'hater,' 'sellout' and 'traitor,' " Smiley said. "They are harassing my mama, harassing my brother."

COMMENTS CRITICIZED

The animus dogged him even on the radio, where his commentaries on black causes for the popular "Tom Joyner Morning Show" were renowned. In a terse statement issued last month, Smiley announced that he was leaving the show to focus on other ventures.

Smiley "did a disservice to the black community," said L.N. Rock, the blogger known as the African American Political Pundit. He noted that Smiley billed the New Orleans gathering as an event for the people. But while the people agreed with Obama's compromise of dispatching his wife, Michelle, to speak in his stead, Smiley balked. "He should have been hammered for that," Rock said.

Wright has been hailed by many in the black clergy as a brilliant liberation theologian. But after his speech and question-and-answer session at the National Press Club last month, people commented on the blog Jack and Jill Politics — billed as a political sounding board for the "black bourgeois" — that the minister should have known better than to pick a fight with the media at such a crucial point in the presidential campaign.

Few of those who commented took issue with the substance of what Wright said. Rather, it was the timing of his presentation and the unapologetic showboating of a man who was already a radioactive presence for Obama that riled black people.

A few supporters called Wright a man of conscience who preached the truth. They were shouted down by others.

WIDESPREAD BACKLASH

The backlash is not limited to the well known. Christopher Chambers, a Georgetown University professor and Obama supporter, said a woman tracked down his cellphone number, dialed it and called him a race traitor after he said Wright's performance would doom the senator's presidential run if he did not act decisively. Obama denounced Wright's appearance later that day.

Barbara Reynolds, a black columnist who brokered Wright's appearance at the press club, was also under assault. She rejected a wave of rumors that cast her as a Hillary Clinton supporter who set up Wright to damage Obama.

Although Reynolds has strongly criticized Obama, she said she is torn over which candidate to support. However, she said, she is unbowed by her critics: "They can label me, but I'm not going to shut up."

Paradoxically, African Americans wondered early on if Obama cared sufficiently about their concerns. But that was before he won the Iowa caucuses. Standing in the path of Obama's campaign has been dangerous ever since.

"Yes, I wish Wright had sat down and decided to be quiet," said Venetria Patton, director of the African American Studies and Research Center at Purdue University.

Of Bill Clinton and his wife, she said: "The more he opened his mouth, the more I was against her."