Fifty-nine percent of blacks said they would view Obama's winning the presidency as one of the biggest advances of the past century for blacks, the Gallup poll released Monday reported.

Twenty-nine percent named Obama, the likely Democratic presidential candidate, as the person whom they'd choose as a spokesman for race issues, poll results indicated. However, 49 percent named someone else while nearly 25 percent offered no name.

The poll was conducted before the controversy arose over the Rev. Jesse Jackson's remark that Obama's message was "talking down to black people."

Other possible spokespersons respondents named were the Rev. Al Sharpton (6 percent), Jackson (4 percent) and Bill and Hillary Clinton (3 percent each), the Princeton, N.J., polling agency said.

The results from Gallup's annual Minority Rights and Relations survey are based on telephone interviews June 5-July 9 with 1,935 adults, including oversamples of blacks and Hispanics. The overall sampling has a margin of error of 4 percentage points; the oversamples have error margins of 5 percentage points to 6 percentage points.