The earlier event at King/Drew high school -- across the street from the controversial medical center -- drew invited guests and dozens of students, with cheerleaders opening the program and a gospel choir closing it.
Clinton made note in her speech of the hospital, which last month lost its federal funding and was forced to close.
"Part of why I'm running for president is to make sure that nobody feels invisible anymore," Clinton said. "If you don't have healthcare, and you don't know where to go, and your hospital closes, you sure feel invisible, don't you?"
Questioners -- including one who prefaced his query with the comment "By the way, you're extremely attractive" -- broached subjects including prison budgets, mortgage rates, faith-based initiatives and discrimination. Clinton repeatedly reached back to her husband's administration, noting to the approving nods of several preachers onstage that he had -- with her praise -- funded the first joint federal-church initiatives.
She alluded to her failed effort to overhaul healthcare, promising to get it right as president, and she returned again and again to advocating education that begins before kindergarten, stretches through college and expands teacher training.
"It takes a village to make sure every child gets an education," she said, riffing on the title of her 1996 book.
To a student who asked about unequal opportunities for schoolchildren in poor communities, she responded: "Anybody who tells you there's no longer discrimination in America is not living with their eyes open."
As popular as Clinton was with the audience, she met her match in Johnson, who drew raucous cheers from students who were youngsters when he retired from the Lakers for the last time in 1996.
So it was left to him to charge up the crowd as the event ended.
"Remember that this is not the first time that the senator is in our community; this is not the first time that she's come and supported people of all colors," he said. "She has been about young people -- she has been about poor people, middle-class people -- her whole life."
"Thirty years of experience," he said as the crowd cheered. "She's the most qualified candidate in this race."
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cathleen.decker@latimes.com
