PRESIDENTIAL RACE | Activists split as Clinton makes push for black millennials

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Six months into Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, she met with a group of Black Lives Matter activists in Washington to make her case and seek their support.

DeRay Mckesson left disappointed, feeling Clinton lacked a grasp of the issues he had spent the previous year protesting in cities like Ferguson, Mo., and Baltimore, including police brutality and income inequality. He came out of the October 2015 meeting unwilling to support her publicly.

On Wednesday, though, The Washington Post published an op-ed by Mckesson announcing his plans to vote for her after meeting again with her last week in Cleveland. He said he heard a candidate well-versed in the things that matter to him.

"There was no platform the first time," the 31-year-old Mckesson said in a telephone interview. "There is a platform now. I reflected on the things I've heard her say, commit to and seen in writing, and that's how I came to my decision."

A growing number of black millennials who were initially skeptical of Clinton – questioning her commitment to end mass incarceration, confront racial bias in policing and repudiate her husband's tough policies on welfare and crime during the 1990s – now support her.

Some do so enthusiastically, others pragmatically, because they find Donald Trump so repugnant with his talk of violence in "inner cities" and the need for "law and order."

But other activists are still not convinced that Clinton will address their priorities and are withholding their votes and public support as she makes a final push to enlist a group seen as key to her path to victory in November.