ON MLK"DREAM speech anniversary, Obama accepts nomination

On MLK "Dream" speech anniversary, Obama accepts nomination 0f
Locals react to first party nomination of African-American

Thursday, Aug 28 2008, 8:28 pm
Graham Cawthon

SHELBY - On the 35th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech outside the Lincoln Memorial, decorations went up inside the Cleveland County Democratic headquarters.One organizer referred to it as a party. Perhaps a party that the dream King spoke of came true."I've been glued to the tube every night for this thing," said Shelby City Councilman Andrew Hopper.What Hopper referred to was the much bigger party out in Denver, Col. to celebrate Sen. Barack Obama's clinching the Democratic Party's presidential nominee."What an exciting time to vote," said J. Benton Reid, who recalled growing up listening to Walter Cronkite give the Vietnam War body count each night on the news and compared that to the current conflict in Iraq."I'm looking at the hope he creates," Reid said of Obama, the first African-American to be a political party's nominee. "I'm looking for that change that will be created."Many have said, including former Sen. Bob Dole who visited Shelby Thursday, that the election between Obama and Sen. John McCain will be a tight race. Hopper, a military veteran of 33 years,
disagreed.

"There's a lot of things wrong with our current leadership," he said, claiming McCain would be too similar to the current administration. "I don't think it's going to be close."In Denver, former Cleveland County Democratic Party Chair Betsy Wells was on her way to Mile High Stadium Thursday evening to hear Obama's acceptance speech.Once a supporter of Sen. Hillary Clinton, Wells said the convention would unify the once divided Democratic Party."We are going to come out of this convention tonight as a unified party," she said. "There's no more Barack Obama delegates, Edwards supporters or Hillary delegates. We will be united behind the Obama-Biden ticket."

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