AP

Re-posted on November 4th, 2023, the 15th anniversary of Barack Obama’s historic presidential victory.

Lisa Van Dusen for Sun Media

November 5, 2008

CHICAGO — Barack Obama came home to Chicago last night to deliver the most historic speech in a career of historic speeches, and to follow through on the second piece of his promise of hope and change.

“A new dawn of American leadership is at hand,” Obama said across a crowd of 80,000 in Chicago’s Grant Park.

After a night that brought a decisive outcome to a campaign so fraught with intensity it riveted the world, Obama announced, “Change has come to America.”

Perhaps with an eye to the immeasurable expectations his candidacy has fueled, he cautioned, “The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even on term but America — I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there.”

Obama will now become the first African-American president in the racially troubled history of this country after a Homeric 22-month campaign in which he slayed, with formidable calm, the most daunting dragons of American power politics, including the Clinton political machine, the Republican political machine and, most historically of all, any enduring belief that a black man can’t be president.

In downtown Chicago, as Obama was declared the winner of a gruelling campaign against John McCain that was never going to be easy, the throngs of thousands in Grant Park erupted and the streets filled with the din of honking horns.

The festive atmosphere in Obama’s hometown had built throughout the day as strangers in the Loop, along the Magnificent Mile, in stores and restaurants asked each other, “Did you vote yet?”

Yesterday afternoon, as people were still voting at the polling station across Michigan Ave. from Grant Park, hundreds waited in the Indian Summer heat, the young people forming “Where are you from?” clusters.

“This is like the ’60s!” said Pierre Paul Dorelien, 39, who took a train from his home in Montreal to Windsor Monday morning, then rented a car to drive the rest of the way.

Dorelien, a businessman born in Haiti, said when he told his 9-year old son he was driving to Chicago, the boy didn’t ask why.

“He knew why I had to come. His only question was, ‘Can I come with you?'”

Bess Greenberg, 29, a freelance photographer from Brooklyn, drove with her mother all day Monday.

“I had to be here. This man has changed the way young people view politics. I actually feel a greater sense of responsibility because of him.”

In a testament to Obama’s enormous and sometimes controversial popularity abroad, many of the people waiting were either foreigners living in the US or had come from abroad to be here for the speech.

Annette Behrens, 40, a German citizen living in the Chicago suburbs, was waiting outside Grant Park for Obama’s speech with her three young daughters, “so they can see what politics can mean.”

By dusk, thousands of people swarmed through the streets of downtown Chicago toward Grant Park on the city’s lakefront as vendors hawked Obama T-shirts, masks and action figures.

Inside the park, after dark, tens of thousands of people stood together, necks craned, watching CNN on jumbotrons. Lighted windows in the skyscrapers lining the park added to the festive atmosphere, spelling out “USA” and “Vote 2008.”

As the results poured in and the night looked better and better for Obama, the crowd grew calmer, waiting to hear about what comes next from the once-longshot candidate who’d be talking to the world from Chicago.

If the people themselves were part of that message, the world saw itself reflected in a crowd of every age, colour and economic background.

Frederikke Toemmergaard, 27, came all the way to Chicago instead, leaving her job in Denmark for 10 days to be here in person.

“We all wanted him to win so badly. Look at this. It’s history.”

Policy Editor and Deputy Publisher Lisa Van Dusen covered Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign as a columnist for Sun Media. She was posted to Washington as Sun Media bureau chief from 2009-2012.