DENVER — When this campaign ends, after future presidents have come and gone, and when today's young people are grown old, history will remember Wednesday, Aug. 27, 2008, as the day a black man became the presidential nominee of a major party.

This is history with the ink still wet; transcendent, yet in your face now.

The roll call of states last night at the Democratic convention means Denver joins Springfield, Ill., and Washington, D.C., in an arc that spans centuries that saw slavery, emancipation, lynchings, Jim Crow, lunch counter bigotry, voting rights, integration, oratory, intermarriage, black pride, assassination, riots, marches — so many marches — and now a nomination.

The arc traces Abraham Lincoln's legacy of freeing the slaves to Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech at the Lincoln Memorial 45 years ago today, to the convention center in Denver. And on next to Invesco Field, where Obama will speak on the anniversary of King's "I have a dream" speech.

"This is a monumental moment in our nation's history," Martin Luther King III, the civil rights icon's oldest son, said yesterday. "And it becomes obviously an even greater moment in November if he's elected."

Until now, Obama's promise has outpaced his achievements and, at times, he has sounded like a man carried along on a wave that came out of the blue.

"When I actually do something," he joked not so long ago, "we'll let you know."

Paradoxically (does history ever unfold in a neat progression?), Obama is less a product of the civil rights movement than most of his black country men and women. He is not a descendent of slaves. He is the son of a black man from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas and was raised in Hawai'i.

Obama inevitably stands on many shoulders as beneficiary of the evolution of black political power in the United States.

There are the shoulders of abolitionist Frederick Douglass, whose many accomplishments include this milestone: At the Republican convention in 1888, he received one vote in the presidential roll call, the first black man to get a vote for a major party nomination.

There are the shoulders of Jesse Jackson, a century later the first black contender to sway the race for president.

And the shoulders of ordinary voters across racial lines, like Kate Clark, 53, a white cafe owner in Nazareth, Pa., who said: "I think we need to see the United States and see the world through eyes that are younger, through eyes that have dreams, through eyes that see something new for the nation."

And Edwin David, who served with the famed World War II unit of black fighters known as the Tuskegee Airmen and, at age 83 and retired in the Pocono Mountains, pleaded: "Just let me live till voting time in November. In my lifetime, we just might get to see the first African-American president."

HAWAI'I REFUSES TO BADMOUTH STATES

Delegates in Denver love to talk about how great their own states are, and some will talk trash — when pressed — about what they think are the worst states.

But not Barack Obama's campaign chairman in Hawai'i.

Los Angeles' city controller allowed that California was best, of course. But when asked which state was worst, she said, "Alabama, I guess."

Nearby, the Ohio delegates easily picked out the worst state. "Oh, Michigan, definitely," said Rick Neal of Columbus.

But when it came to Andy Winer on the Hawai'i delegation, he said: "We're from Hawai'i. We don't talk stink about other states."

NOT ON TICKET, BUT GIVEN THE STAGE

Hillary Rodham Clinton isn't the only also-ran on the loose in Denver. Four officials who were mentioned as possible running mates for Barack Obama but didn't make it onto the ticket were getting a chance to address the Democratic convention last night.

Cue the music for New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, Sens. Evan Bayh of Indiana and Jack Reed of Rhode Island, and Texas Rep. Chet Edwards.

OLYMPIC GYMNAST TO LEAD PLEDGE

DES MOINES, Iowa — Barack Obama's presidential campaign says Olympic gymnast Shawn Johnson will lead the Pledge of Allegiance at the Democratic National Convention today.

The 16-year-old Johnson won four medals at the recent Beijing Olympics, including a gold in the women's balance beam competition. She begins a 40-city gymnastics tour next week.