DENVER--Charles E. Bibb, Sr. was a 29-year-old civil rights activist when he joined the 1963 March on Washington. On Thursday night, Bibb, 74, was among the 80,000 people who flocked to to Invesco Field to watch Barack Obama accept the Democratic Party nomination.

“This is the most glorious night of my political life,” said Bibb, a longtime Democratic party stalwart from Cleveland who coordinated Jesse Jackson's 1984 campaign in Ohio. “It took me three hours to walk here. [As] you got closer, you knew why you were here and the spirit kicked in. It's like the end of the Rainbow.”

Bibb's giddiness and sense of being present at history-in-the-making was widely shared in a crowd composed of people of all ages and colors and from all walks of life who gathered on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King's “I Have a Dream” Speech.

For Rita Deklyen, Thursday night marked the latest stop in an improbable political journey for the 45-year-old mother of two from suburban Indianapolis. A lifelong Republican who first volunteered at the age of 13 in Dan Quayle's 1976 congressional campaign, Deklyen switched her support to Obama last fall after reading his best-selling book, “The Audacity of Hope”.  She canvassed door-to-door for Obama during the month leading up to the Indiana primary and on Thursday was hawking her homemade Obama T-shirts at the stadium entrance.

“The thing that resonates with me is that he doesn't believe government can do everything,” she said. “He's trying to unify the whole country and get everyone working together.”

Deklyen said she was also drawn to Obama's cross-racial appeal.

“Skin color doesn't matter at all,” she said. “And the world would be much better if everyone felt that way.”

Mya Gallacher, a 21-year-old nursing student from Denver said she would be volunteering in a political campaign for the first time this fall because of Obama's call for near-universal health care coverage.

“It [the health care system] is completely broken,” she said. “People are left to fend for themselves until they get in an emergency state. If people can get coverage, they can have preventative care and they can stay healthy.”

Two other Bush Administration disasters—the Iraq War and Hurricane Katrina—were also on people's minds.

Barbara of Flower Mount, Texas has a son in the Army who is slated to return to Iraq for a second tour of duty. She drove to Denver with her girlfriend to re-assure herself that Obama was the right choice.

“I need to support someone who can get those kids out of there and end a war we never should have started,” she said. After hearing Obama's 44-minute oration, she was sold. “He makes me feel like he's a down-to-earth person I could talk to just like I'm talking to you.”

Reilly Morse of Biloxi, Mississippi said Hurricane Katrina had upended political allegiances in southern Mississippi, which was devastated by the storm. With reconstruction stalled and many people still living in FEMA trailers while they are unable to sue insurance companies due to Republican-led tort reforms, Morse sees an opening for Obama and the Democrats in a state that hasn't gone Democratic since Jimmy Carter won it by 10,000 votes in 1976.

“People who have been voting Republican for a long time are having to rethink a lot of their assumptions,” Morse said. “... People are seeing that Republican Party rule is falling short in a very real way and that is reaching all the way down to southern Mississippi.”

For Roger Van Natta, Obama's promise to revive the economy was key. An officer in UAW Local 766, which represents 350 aerospace workers at a Lockheed Martin plant in Littleton, Colorado, Van Natta lamented the loss of good-paying jobs.

“If they want to secure something, they should secure our border, not be in Iraq,” Van Natta said.

Van Natta said he thought Obama could win Colorado, a swing state with nine electoral votes that has voted Republican in the past three presidential elections but he added, “there's still some rednecks out there who won't vote for someone because they are a black or a woman.”

From their vantage point at the top of the north end of the stadium, Kieran and Mike Nelson watched the sun drop into the Rocky Mountains on a mild summer evening as Obama's surrogates warmed up the crowd with testimonials on his behalf. Later, Kieran, who manages a rugby facility, recalled the first time she saw Obama speak when he appeared at a local high school in 2004.

“I fell in love with this man and said right then he should be the next president,” she said. “If nothing else, he's inspired hope again in this country.”

Her husband Mike, an electrical contractor who helped install the lighting system at Invesco Field, hailed Obama as being “both tough and philosophical” and said he supported Obama's proposals to ramp up investment in renewable energy sources.

“I think the future is in harnessing what we have—solar, wind and other renewables,” he said. “I think he's got the commitment.”

However, he warned that Obama and the Democrats could still fall short with blue-collar voters.

“There's issues the Democrats don't deal with well like the Second Amendment. You  have to do a better job of convincing blue-collar workers that you are on their side ... They [the Democrats] have to do a better job of conveying kitchen table issues.”

During his acceptance speech, Obama was repeatedly interrupted by rapturous applause as he unfurled his policy proposals and his focus-group driven talking points.  A final crescendo of fireworks greeted the conclusion of the speech.

Walking out of the stadium, Letitia Williams was trembling with joy.  Born in Alabama in 1934, she participated in the Selma to Montgomery freedom march in March of 1965 demanding full voting rights for herself and her fellow African-Americans. The protest was brutally broken up when state police attacked non-violent protesters. However, nationally broadcast images of the event would force Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act.

“It gives me goosebumps,” she said, reflecting on what she had just seen. “It was a long struggle but every moment was worth it. Tonight was the absolute dessert of the struggle ... We have reached the absolute pinnacle of change and I know he's going to make it happen.”