Rep. Steve Cohen, a freshman Democrat whose Tennessee district is heavily African-American, is one of the latest members of Congress to endorse Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) for president.

Cohen, who faces a tough primary challenge this year in which race could be a factor, released a statement this week backing Obama and calling him the agent of change that the country needs.

 Cohen hesitated in endorsing Obama until the eve of the Tennessee primary because he didn’t want to offend Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), said Marilyn Dillihay, Cohen’s spokeswoman. As a state senator, Cohen had worked with President Bill Clinton when Clinton was the governor of Arkansas. But Obama, like Cohen, had opposed the Iraq war from the start and has promised to bring a new approach to Washington, Dillihay said.

Dillihay said Obama and Cohen would share a unique perspective if Obama were elected president.

“Congressman Cohen is a white man representing a majority-black district. If Sen. Obama is successful in his campaign, he will be a black man representing a majority-white country,” Dillihay said.

Nearly 60 percent of Cohen’s district, which includes Memphis, is black. Cohen made an unsuccessful attempt at the beginning of the 110th Congress to join the Congressional Black Caucus, backing off only after several current and past caucus members said all members of the group must be black.

Cohen replaced Harold Ford Jr. (D), who retired to make an unsuccessful bid for the  Senate.

Cohen is facing a primary challenge this year from Memphis attorney Nikki Tinker, who is black and placed second behind Cohen in the 2006 Democratic primary. In that primary, Cohen faced 14 opponents, one of whom raised the issue of race by sending an e-mail out to voters warning that they could be electing a representative who wasn’t African-American for the first time in three decades. Cohen won the primary by six points and went on to take the seat.