The sign in Chicago last night said it all.

“We have overcome.”

45 years after Martin Luther King told black Americans to keep dreaming, last night it was hard not to think that his dream has come true.

The tears in Jesse Jackson’s eyes spoke for a people.

Barack Obama of course does not come from the same American experience as most black Americans. But he has managed to re-enfranchise their hopes while inspiring many others who want change, who wanted something and someone to vote for.

This could not have been imagined just a few short years ago. In my lifetime, black people who marched for their rights were set upon by police dogs and water cannons. In my lifetime, Jim Crow laws kept blacks segregated in the south, while in the north, a much more subtle, unwritten set of laws applied.

Just what it will mean to have a black president remains to be seen. One hopes that beyond smashing the colour bar, it means not very much aside from the positive symbolism and the inspiration it will provide about obstacles that can be overcome.