Jon Cohen and Jennifer Agiesta, Washington Post
- Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential candidacy is widely seen as a sign of progress for African Americans, and more than a third of U.S. adults say his nomination tonight makes them prouder to be Americans.
The new Washington Post-ABC News poll also shows a jump in the percentage of black voters who think their children could one day grow up to be president. The numbers are a backdrop to Obama’s ascension to the top of the Democratic ticket, as he becomes the first African American major-party presidential nominee 45 years to the day after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington.
“One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society,” King said on this date in 1963, lamenting the state of black America a century after slavery was outlawed. Now, 76 percent of African Americans and 71 percent of whites see Obama’s nomination as evidence of broad-based achievements for blacks in the country. Far fewer, 21 percent overall, see it more as a single case that does not reflect a more fundamental shift.
