DaytonDailyNews.com

CINCINNATI — On a history-making night in this old river city, Democrat Barack Obama gave thanks for the civil rights pioneers he said made possible his once unlikely but so far successful campaign for president.

Speaking on Monday, July 14, to the 99th annual convention of the NAACP, Obama, the first major party black presidential candidate, hailed the youthful bravery of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., U.S. Rep. John Lewis of Georgia, current NAACP Chairman Julian Bond and Diane Nash, a founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

"It is because of them, and all those whose names never made it into the history books — the men and women, young and old, black, brown and white, clear-eyed and straight-backed, who refused to settle for the world as it is. ... It's because of them that I stand before you tonight as the Democratic nominee for president of the United States," the Illinois senator said to thunderous applause.

More than 3,000 had packed the hall in Duke Energy Convention Center downtown, with an estimated 1,400 in an overflow room and another estimated 5,000 gathered in the center of town a few blocks away on Fountain Square, watching Obama on a giant flat-screen TV.

Mia Wortham Spells, 53, a Dayton attorney, said, "I just think this is an historic event."

It was even more special, she said, because of the progress Cincinnati has made since rioting erupted in 2001 after a white city police officer shot and killed an unarmed black man.