I have to credit my good pal and faithful reader Rod Powell of Chester for this one.

Sen. Barack Obama, now the presumptive presidential Democratic nominee, made history this week when it became clear he had the delegates to capture the nomination. In so doing he will become the first person of color to be nominated for president by one of the major political parties.

And the night when he accepts that nomination has historical significance as well.

Obama will stride to the microphone in Denver on Aug. 28 to take on the mantle of Democratic candidate for president of the United States.

It will come exactly 45 years after another man stepped to a microphone in another city and made a little history.

It was Aug. 28, 1963, that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. appeared in front of a sweltering throng on the mall in Washington, D.C., and delivered one of the most famous speeches in American history.

King hushed the crowd – and awed a nation – with his words and oratory. He talked about his “dream,” about a nation where a man would not be judged by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character.

Forty-five years later, Obama will become the living personification of that dream.

When it comes to presidential politics, the nation finally will live up to King’s words, that all men are indeed created equal.