Congressional Black Caucus members say they have moved beyond the dust-up between Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.) – which they feel has been overblown — but some admit that feelings are still raw.

Rep. Lacy Clay (D-Mo.) said he expects the matter to come up at the weekly caucus meeting Thursday.

“Now the veneer has come off people like [Black Entertainment Television founder] Bob Johnson, who felt compelled to make statements that might bring down the one candidate who can expand upon the dream and advance the civil rights movement,” Clay said.

Some charge that Johnson implicitly criticized Obama for using drugs, which the senator admitted trying when he was younger.

Clay added that voters will decide how the debate over race mattered.

“I think the chips will fall where they may and the dust will settle over time,” he said.

Caucus spokeswoman Keiana Barrett said that the caucus will discuss a host of issues at its meeting, one of which could be the presidential race and the CBC-sponsored Democratic debate next Monday. Barrett noted that the caucus itself has not endorsed a candidate, allowing individual members to support whomever they choose.

Of the caucus’s 41 House members, 16 are supporting Obama, 15 are supporting Clinton and three are supporting former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.). Obama is the only senator in the caucus.

Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.), the caucus’s second vice chairman and a Clinton supporter, told The Hill he has also heard from constituents about statements out of the Clinton and Obama camps. Speaking to one constituent concerned and confused over attacks against Obama, Cleaver said he likened the dissension among Democrats to something the Ku Klux Klan would have engineered.

“The Klan could not have devised a better plan to get African-Americans to attack African-Americans than those who have served as the architects of this discord,” Cleaver told her. When asked who he thought was responsible, he said he did not know but added that people in the media knew the culprits.

Cleaver and other caucus members, however, also emphasized that they and other Democrats would get past this.

Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.), an Obama supporter, said that Democrats should be focusing on the historic nature of having a woman and an African-American contend for the presidency.

“One of them is going to shatter one of the strongest historical barriers,” he said.  “We ought to be celebrating this.”

Davis said that while personal criticism by Clinton surrogates like Johnson has not been helpful, it was not appropriate to criticize the Clintons, who have been strong civil rights supporters.

Rep. Danny Davis (D-Ill.), the caucus’s secretary and another Obama backer, said he did not think that the caucus had to do anything more to tamp down tensions between caucus members and the candidates, who agreed to a truce Monday.

“Different members are supporting different candidates,” he said. “It has not erupted into a big deal.

“Whether Martin Luther King did more than Lyndon Johnson, or Lyndon Johnson did more than Martin Luther King, that’s not what the campaigns are arguing right now,” he added. “Without both of them, it would have happened.”