The dream is alive

ELECTRIFYING | 4 years ago, Obama was a relative unknown. Now, he has given us a defining moment for which we have long waited.

In Baptist and Pentecostal churches on Sunday mornings, you can depend on at least one elderly member getting up and breaking into, "Lord, you brought me from a mighty long way."

The words of that spiritual kept running through my head as I watched Invesco Field fill up.

Four years ago, Barack Obama was virtually unknown on the national stage, and he and his wife, Michelle, could walk down the street without anyone giving them a second look.

But in an electrifying moment before many of the same people who were in Invesco on Thursday night, Obama stepped into the currents that sweep us into history.

"Four years ago, I stood before you and told you my story -- of the brief union between a young man from Kenya and a young woman from Kansas who weren't well off or well-known, but share a belief that in America, their son could achieve whatever he put his mind to," Obama said in his opening.

"It is the promise that has always set this country apart -- that through hard work and sacrifice, each of us can pursue our individual dreams but still come together as one American family, to ensure that the next generation can pursue their dreams as well," he said.

Despite the loftiest words you'll read this morning, most of us will be a long way down the road before we really appreciate that a barrier has been broken.

Historians would agree that 45 years ago, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. did not know that the words of his "I have a dream speech" would be passed on from fathers to son, and from mothers to daughters.

The pressure on Obama to deliver a speech that lives up to his reputation as a spellbinding speaker, as well as somehow honors the legacy of King's famous speech, has been incredible.

But defining moments in this country -- whether they occur in 1963 or in 2008 -- share a similar quality.

We do not recognize them until they have passed.

When King took his campaign for justice to Washington, D.C., he drew the masses of discouraged blacks who, along with progressive whites, pushed the country forward.

On Thursday night, Obama flung wide open the doors to what is usually the Democratic Party's private bash.

His invitation was so well-received, that two hours before Obama was due to speak, the lines still stretched two miles long, and the 75,000-seat stadium was filled.

Obama came to Denver to remind Democrats that their government had given them a "bad check."

"When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," King said in 1963.

When Obama stood before 84,000 flag-waving Democrats as the party's presidential nominee, he too was attempting to rally Americans not to give up on the promise.

"That's why I stand here tonight, because for two hundred and thirty-two years, at each moment when that promise was in jeopardy, ordinary men and women . . . have found the courage to keep it alive."

Four years ago, we were asking if King's dream had died.

On Thursday, Barack Obama, showed the world that the dream is still very much alive.