John Lewis is old enough to see and not believe

Denver:  When the Democratic Party officially nominated Barack Obama for the presidency on Wednesday night, a 68-year-old son of Alabama sharecroppers sat in Section 122 of the Pepsi Centre, pondering a time when the scene before him was utterly inconceivable.

Forty-five years ago, Representative John Lewis of Georgia was a young civil rights leader sharing the stage at the Lincoln Memorial with Martin Luther King Jr, as his mentor delivered the "I Have a Dream" speech. As a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Lewis was more radical at the time, and his speech was more heated than King's. But Lewis's goals were modest: protecting blacks from racially motivated violence, equalising educational opportunity, and ending the literacy test and other barriers to voting.

Electing an African-American to the White House wasn't exactly on the radar screen. "You didn't even think about it, you didn't talk about it," Lewis said. "People were struggling, struggling for the right to vote, to end segregation. In many parts of the American South, people were so afraid - they were afraid to be afraid."

Lewis is the only surviving speaker from that day on the rostrum, and all this week he has hurried between March on Washington commemorations and Democratic National Convention events.

He played a starring role in a video tribute to Edward Kennedy on Monday night, recalling the ailing Senate icon's civil rights record, almost as long as his own. He cried when Michelle Obama told delegates later that night that it was time to "stop doubting and start dreaming".