AS BARACK Obama prepared to accept the Democratic nomination before 75,000 people at a Denver football stadium last night, Democrats were alive to the historical significance of the event.
It came 45 years to the day after Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech at Washington's Lincoln Memorial, a site evoked by the classical columns that formed Mr Obama's backdrop last night.
For delegates at the convention, however, last night's speech had a political purpose more urgent than any historical resonance - to crack open a presidential race that has narrowed to a dead heat.
"If you look at the last several elections, they've been very close. I expect this election to be close," Illinois congressman Jerry Costello, an early supporter of Mr Obama's, told The Irish Times.
"I just think the country is divided. They're not to the far left and not to the far right, they're at the centre. And I think that's what Barack Obama's got to do, he has to convince them that he's going to lead from the centre and address many of the problems that the Bush administration has brought on over the last eight years."
The Obama campaign yesterday rejected Republican taunts that, by moving his acceptance speech to a vast auditorium, Mr Obama was celebrating himself rather than addressing the concerns of the American people. "It's ridiculous," campaign manager David Plouffe said. "This convention is going to be opened up to the American people - that should be celebrated."
Georgia congressman and veteran civil rights activist John Lewis, the only surviving speaker at Dr King's 1963 rally, said Mr Obama's nomination was a moment of transcendent historical significance.
"When Barack Obama accepts the Democratic nomination to become the president of the United States of America and starts speaking, I think all of America and many parts of the world - the hopes, the longings, the aspirations and the dreams - will be hanging on every word he says," he told National Public Radio.
"It's going to be incredible. You know, people died . . . they were tear-gassed. Some were shot and killed. And even after the March on Washington, where there had been so much hope, so much optimism, we had to deal with the bombing on a church in Birmingham, where four little girls were killed. But I've cried all my tears."