"Traitor," the black woman hissed out the window after swerving her vehicle near the curb.
Lloyd Marcus, also black, recalls the insult, hurled at him four years ago, as he stood on a sidewalk holding a Bush-for-president sign.
Marcus is a minority within a minority -- a black man who supports Republican candidates.
This year, he's backing Republican nominee John McCain, even though Democrat Barack Obama is vying to be the nation's first black president.
McCain is expected to get 5 percent or less of the black vote. Bush got 11 percent in 2004.
"I have been called an Uncle Tom and things like that," said Marcus, president of the Deltona Arts & Historical Center. "If I wasn't so convinced my view was correct and best for people, the name-calling would bother me."
A singer and producer, Marcus plans to start a nationwide anti-Obama tour Wednesday. He'll sing patriotic songs he's written at "Our Country Deserves Better" rallies from Sacramento to Washington, D.C.
At a rally in Coral Gables in September, a group of 10 protesters with signs calling themselves "Blacks Against Obama" disrupted the Obama rally. Their signs said Obama was for abortion and gay rights and was endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan. Although Obama said the protesters could stay, they were escorted out after they continued shouting.
Black voters who support McCain are subject to backlash and pressures, said Steve MacNamara, an associate professor of communication at Florida State University.
"I don't think there is a single demographic more loyal to African-American candidates than African-American voters," he said. "With a candidate for high office, there would be extra pressure, not only for that demographic to continue to support that candidate, but also to turn out to vote."
Such pressure is not a phenomenon unique to the black community, he said.
"If you grew up in an Irish Catholic neighborhood in Philadelphia or Pennsylvania, you're going to get that Irish Catholic pressure," MacNamara said. "Grow up in a Jewish suburb of Chicago, and you'll get that pressure."
MacNamara said he has a black friend who opposes Obama. His friend makes more than $200,000 and would face higher taxes under Obama's plan. But, his friend put an Obama bumper sticker on his car.
"I'm sure he was asked to put it there as a sign of loyalty," he said.
William Owens Jr., a North Carolina author of "Obama -- Why Black America Should Have Doubts," maintains Obama does not share the same values black Americans hold dear, such as gay and abortion rights.
He acknowledged, but refused to discuss, the backlash from other black people because of his views.
"I don't want to react to complainers," he said. "I'm feeding them if I do that."
A professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland, Ronald Walters, called the pressure against Obama critics "blowback."
Black voters don't even have to support McCain to get "blowback," he said. Merely asking a tough question is enough.
"When you raise questions about politics and accountability, you're immediately interpreted as someone who doesn't want him (Obama) to win," Walters said. "It comes from historic pressure."
Most blacks don't want to upset Obama's chances of being the first black president by giving white people who are racially sensitive a reason to vote against him, he said.
"So, they don't want to bother him about black issues or the black agenda, because they think white voters will vote against him," Walters said.
Norma Bland, a Daytona Beach activist, said everyone, black, white, Asian and Native American, should support Obama.
"Ask your mama about Obama," she said. "I asked my mama, and she said it's all good and I should vote for Obama."
Her 83-year-old mother already had tea parties with her friends where they all decided to send in absentee ballots for Obama.
It's more than the best chance to elect a black man president.
"It's the best chance for a smart president who happens to be black," Bland said. "George Bush was the dumbest president, and he's white."
Most of her friends, black and white, support Obama. Two black friends from New York are Republicans who support McCain.
"They don't get it," Bland said. "They live in a place where they think McCain will be their salvation, and (instead) he'll put them on the plantation."
Denise McMillon, 43, of Daytona Beach said people, especially black people, who know the history of the struggle for civil rights should know to vote for Obama.
"Don't vote for the color, vote for the message for change," she said. "We continue to settle for less, and less has caused this country to be in the shape it is now."
McMillon remembers the hush that came over a family gathering after a cousin revealed he was Republican.
"I was stunned," she said. "I know there are black Republicans, but to know there's one in your own family . . "
On a September visit to Bethune-Cookman University, black public television host Tavis Smiley talked about the criticism directed at him for asking tough questions of Obama.
Smiley got hit again after his visit, in an unpublished commentary sent to The News-Journal from Bethune-Cookman University professor Claudette McFadden.
"He told the audience that he and Barack have been friends a long time," she wrote. "With friends like Tavis Smiley, who needs enemies."
In a telephone interview, McFadden denied black-on-black pressure to back Obama. She remembered her letter as criticizing Smiley for failing to talk about leadership.
"I don't think there's an automatic expectation," she said. "I think that's a bit naive."
Democrats have had an overwhelming majority of black-voter support sewn up ever since the poor response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Walters said.
"I have been in the audience a number of times when Republican Party chairmen are making African-American outreach," Walters said. "It just doesn't go down well to a black audience. They felt the administration really let them down, disrespected them."
Most black Republicans who support McCain won't be called names such as "Uncle Tom," said Andra Gillespie, assistant professor of political science at Emory University. But they will face pressure. And most are prepared for the pressure, she said.
"The black Republicans I have spoken to for research purposes express pride in what Barack Obama is doing, but also are prepared to defend their positions supporting McCain," Gillespie said. "They say they have to defend their position all the time."
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