A member of the crowd at a recent campaign rally for Barack Obama in Cleveland, Ohio.

It was the old civil rights veteran in me that brought out the tears. Here, finally, was a young, black politician who could revive the dream, conjure our better angels and perhaps even

reverse the slow slide into racial and political disharmony. Here was the Redeemer!

Barack Obama, then only 42, became the star of that year’s Democratic gathering. In his drama and promise, he even overshadowed John Kerry, whom the party had chosen as its nominee for

the Democratic Party. I thought it be a good trial run for Obama, who would have great promise later on.

My old friend and political interlocutor Andrew Young, a civil rights hero and America’s first black ambassador to the UN, remarked: “I want Barack Obama for president ... in 2016.” And,

like Andy, I supported Hillary Clinton. I doubted that a Salvationist campaign could reach beyond young people and the party’s liberal elite. Surely, it could not face down the formidable

Republican destruction machine.

But now the impossible dream is about to come to pass. Andrew Young and I were off by eight years. I only wish that Martin Luther King Jr. -- Young’s boss in the civil rights movement and

the man who inspired me in 1960 as a young activist in North Carolina -- were here to witness the triumph.

Dr. King’s great dream was of “the beloved community.” This was a concept the civil rights leader took from philosopher-theologian Josiah Royce. King, a student of Mahatma Gandhi, saw it as

a global goal in which everyone shares in the Earth’s wealth and “love and trust will triumph over fear and hatred.”

As utopian as his idea sounds, King always insisted it could be realized even in a world where human conflict was a reality. For years, I believed the beloved community was an achievable

concept, and then I fell away from that belief. But, today, when we see the rush of emotional support for young Obama --100,000 people at a single rally in Missouri! -- I begin to think the

idea still has life. Certainly the rest of the world -- and especially Europe -- has begun to invest in Obama. To them, as a young American born of a white mother and a Kenyan father, Obama

embodies their unexpressed and long-suppressed dreams of lambs lying down with lions.

But let’s be realistic. President Obama will inherit a country -- and a world -- in turmoil. He will have wars to run and not just to end. He has already donned the mantel of terrorism

fighter, for example, by promising to take the battle to the bad guys in northwest Pakistan. (Ironically enough, the Bush administration has already begun practicing the "Obama doctrine" by

attacking terrorists in sanctuaries where the Pakistanis are helpless to act). Obama will face -- and make -- hard choices that cost lives.

As I write this at a Caribou Café in Washington, everyone else on the terrace is black. At the next table, three immigrants are having an animated, joyful conversation. I think they are

speaking Amharic, the language of Ethiopia (Washington is the largest Ethiopian town outside Addis Ababa). I hear the word “Obama” from time to time, which means that they are also talking

politics on the eve of history.

This scene reminds me of how far the United States has come in the past 25 years in terms of diversity and immigration. And though we have ghettos and crime and racial separation, we are

still struggling and working to solve the problem. Obama’s election moves us one big step further along this continuum.

In only a few hours now, America will take the step I never expected to see in my lifetime. It will give old "civil rightsers" and young people who never saw King hope and a reason to

embrace activism. And, when it happens, I will no doubt have some tears in my eyes.