Jackson told Obama: "resist any temptation to come down to that level"

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Still, Mr. Jackson said that he had spoken to Mr. Obama on Saturday night and to Mr. Clinton a few days earlier and that he had appealed to both to “take it to a higher ground.”

Mr. Jackson, the long-time civil rights activist, is supporting Mr. Obama while his wife, Jacqueline Jackson, is supporting Mrs. Clinton. Their son, Representative Jesse Jackson Jr., is supporting Mr. Obama.

While Mr. Jackson made race a prominent part of his own campaigns, Mr. Obama has sought to downplay it and presented himself as a transcendent figure.

In his conversation with Mr. Obama on Saturday, Mr. Jackson said, “He told me what Bill had said. And I said to Barack, as a tactical matter, resist any temptation to come down to that level. There may be temptations, especially when the media keeps saying ‘Barack is black,’ and they never said ‘Dukakis is white’ or ‘Hillary is white,’’ he said, referring to Michael Dukakis, who won the Democratic nomination in 1988.

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Several other prominent Democrats had also talked with Mr. Clinton earlier in the week, urging him not to escalate racial tensions within the party. One, Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina, said on CNN that Mr. Clinton should “chill.”

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Democrats inside and outside the Clinton campaign on Sunday debated and in some cases bemoaned the degree to which former President Bill Clinton’s criticism of Senator Barack Obama last week had inflicted lasting damage on his wife’s presidential candidacy.

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Representative Charles B. Rangel of New York, a leading supporter of Mrs. Clinton, said on Sunday that Mr. Clinton was going to pull back. “He’s got to,” Mr. Rangel said. “The focus has got to get back on Hillary. For all that he cares about his wife, this has to be her election to win, and it’s become too much about his role.”

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