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Historic date for Obama
28/08/2008 21:59 - (SA)
Denver - A heavy hand of history rests on Barack Obama's shoulder as he prepares on Thursday to deliver his acceptance address as the first black presidential nominee of a major US party.
The date is freighted with symbolism, coming on the 45th anniversary of the legendary "I Have a Dream" speech of black civil rights hero Martin Luther King.
The setting, a Denver sports stadium filled with 75 000 supporters, also reaches back through time to the only other occasion when a nominee delivered his acceptance speech outdoors.
That was in 1960, when another charismatic young senator called John F Kennedy spoke in a Los Angeles stadium to describe a "new frontier" full of "unknown opportunities and perils".
Indeed, according to Obama strategist David Axelrod, the 47-year-old Illinois senator is drawing inspiration from JFK's nominating address, as well as those of Bill Clinton in 1992 and Ronald Reagan in 1980.
Obama, who made his name with an electrifying address to the 2004 Democratic convention, has promised a "workman-like" oration that draws sharp contrasts with his Republican opponent for November's election, John McCain.
'It's about the American people'
"This speech, and this election, is not about Barack Obama. It's about the American people ... about the direction we need to go to get us out of the ditch we're in," Axelrod said.
But as he has drafted his words in longhand on a yellow legal pad, Obama has been retracing the steps of predecessors who delivered a call to arms for a new generation to remake the nation.
Clinton, who brought the house down with a resounding endorsement of Obama at the Democratic convention late Wednesday, outlined his appeal for a "new covenant" in 1992.
While Obama is nodding to his Democratic forebears, he is also reaching back to the Republicans' greatest modern communicator, Reagan, and his assertion in 1980 that it was "time to recapture our destiny".
On this day in 1963, Martin Luther King addressed a sea of people from the steps of Washington's Lincoln Memorial to declare that the time would come when the fires of racial injustice would be extinguished.
"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character," the revered black leader declared.
That speech
Obama acknowledges the giant debt owed to the assassinated King and his foot-soldiers in the bloody civil rights struggle.
"I think it's fair to say that, had it not been for not just the speech but the movement behind the speech ... then I wouldn't be in Denver on Thursday accepting the nomination for the presidency," he said on Monday.
"It says something wonderful about America."
Two of King's children and Democratic congressman John Lewis, who stood at his side at the Lincoln Memorial that day, were to present a tribute to the assassinated leader before Obama.
Lewis, 68, was an early backer of Obama's rival for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton, but was swayed as history appeared to beckon for the black senator.
"This is what we fought for. This is what we almost died for, and some did die for," he told the Washington Post.
"So I had an executive session with myself and said, 'I don't want to be on the wrong side of history.'"
- AFP
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US Elections Special Report
