WASHINGTON - DECRYING Barack Obama as 'white power in black face', hundreds of African-Americans marched on the White House on Saturday to protest policies of the first black US president, and demand that he bring US troops home.

More than 200 people gathered for the first public demonstration by African Americans against the Obama administration since his historic inauguration in January, and slammed the president for continuing what they described as Washington's 'imperialist' agenda around the world.

'We recognise that Barack Hussein Obama is white power in black face,' civil rights activist Omali Yeshitela, chairman of the Black is Back coalition which arranged the protest, called into a megaphone as the group marched outside the mansion's gates.

'He is a tool of our imperialist enemies and we demand our freedom. And we demand that Obama withdraw all the troops from Afghanistan right now.' Protesters also called for Mr Obama to order troops out of Iraq and to scrap Africom, the controversial year-old United States Africa Command, and demanded 'hands off' Venezuela and ends to the Cuba embargo and the Zimbabwe blockade.

Several demonstrators held up placards bearing messages such as 'US out of Afghanistan' and 'Stop US war against Iraq.'

Charles Baron, a New York city councilman and former member of the Black Panthers, a Black Power movement in the mid-1960s and 1970s, attacked the president for turning a cold shoulder to the plight of African-Americans. -- AFP