In churches and bars, on the street and in their homes, African Americans celebrated Barack Obama's historic Presidential election victory on Tuesday with tears, horn blasts and shouts of joy.
In New York, people of all races streamed down from Broadway from Columbia University to Mr Obama's campaign office at 105th Street chanting "O-ba-ma".
Mr Obama supporters drove through the streets of downtown Washington for hours, honking their horns and cheering. A crowd of several hundred people gathered outside the gates of the White House in the drizzle, beating a drum.
In Atlanta, at civil rights leader Martin Luther King's old church, Ebenezer Baptist, a deafening shout greeted the announcement of Mr Obama's victory and rolled on for minutes.
"On the night before King was assassinated, he said: 'I have been to the mountain top, I have looked over and I have seen the promised land. I may not get there with you,'" Pastor Raphael Warnock said.
"Tonight we have seized the promise of America."
And in Chicago's Grant Park, Rev. Jesse Jackson stood among a crowd of tens of thousands of Obama supporters with tears rolling down his cheeks.
Rev. Jackson, who twice sought the Presidency himself, witnessed King's assassination in Memphis 40 years ago.
For anyone with a sense of America's history of slavery and the 19th century Civil War that tore the country apart, Mr Obama's win was a landmark.
Slavery and its successor, a brutal system of racial segregation that prevailed in the South until the 1960s, long tarnished the country's pride in democratic ideals.
"And so it came to pass that on November 4, 2008, shortly after 11 p.m. Eastern time, the American Civil War ended, as a black man - Barack Hussein Obama - won enough electoral votes to become President of the US," wrote New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman.
It was not just columnists seeing a moment to savour.
"This is definitely history in the making," said elementary school teacher Sheneka Mayes, 32, in Atlanta. "This night will be burned into my memory and into the memory of my children."
In a politically polarised country, many conservatives bemoaned the defeat of Republican John McCain but supporters of Democrat Obama delighted in his win, and many of them because he will be the first black president in US history.
A big crowd held a candlelight vigil at King's tomb in Atlanta, setting the election firmly in the context of the movement in the 1950s and 1960s to end racial segregation and win the right to vote for black Americans in the South.
"My grandfather was born a slave, so for me to see this happen means that there is hope for America, said Vanessa Ford, who works for Coca Cola.
Later, thousands packed Ebenezer Baptist, listening to speeches and thumping gospel music from a choir dressed in black, and watching two giant TV screens scrolling results.
For many, Mr Obama's win was all the sweeter because it brushed away worries that weeks of opinion polls giving him a lead against Mr McCain might have overestimated his support among the country's white majority.
"This is a great night. This is an unbelievable night," said US Rep. John Lewis of Georgia, who was brutally beaten by police in Selma, Alabama, during a voting rights march in 1965.
"Tonight we can celebrate and thank God almighty. Martin Luther King must be looking down from the heavens and saying 'hallelujah'," Mr Lewis said.
In New York, thousands of people were enthralled by a big screen set up on 125th street in Harlem, the unofficial capital of black America.
Cab drivers honked their horns, a city bus driver inched his bus through an impromtu block party and paused to high-five the throngs through his window.
In other East Coast cities including Boston and Miami, crowds of mostly younger revellers poured into the streets for impromptu celebrations.
In his home city of Chicago, Obama gave a victory speech to a crowd of more than 200,000. Many had waited hours to see him, sensing it would be a milestone in history.
For Dornise Pewitt, the election of a black man offered hope for her sons and daughter.
"Maybe people will be able to see them differently and look past the colour of their skin," she said.
Significant events in black American history
1619 - The first African slaves arrive in Virginia.
1793 - The invention of the cotton gin increases demand for slave labour in the South. Fugitive Slave Act seeks to require free states to return fugitive slaves, but is rarely enforced in the North.
1808 - Importation of slaves banned.
1861 - The Confederacy is founded when the South secedes from the United States. Civil War begins.
1863 - President Abraham Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring all slaves in Confederate states free.
1865 - The civil war ends. Lincoln is assassinated. The 13th amendment to the US Constitution outlaws slavery.
1868 - The 14th amendment grants full citizenship to all African-Americans.
1870 - The right to vote is given to black males.
1896 - The Supreme Court holds racial segregation is constitutional, paving the way for segregation in the South.
1947 - Jackie Robinson becomes the first black to play Major League baseball, known as America's pastime.
1948 - President Harry S. Truman issues an executive order desegregating the US armed forces.
1954 - Supreme Court's "Brown vs Board of Education" decision declares segregation in schools unconstitutional.
1955 - Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Her arrest sparks a successful year-long boycott led by Martin Luther King to desegregate the city's buses.
1963 - Martin Luther King is jailed during civil rights protests in Birmingham, Alabama. Delivers I Have a Dream speech in Washington.
1964 - President Lyndon Johnson signs Civil Rights Act. King wins Nobel Peace Prize.
1965 - Civil rights leader Malcolm X is murdered. Congress passes the Voting Rights Act.
1966 - Edward Brooke of Massachusetts is elected the first black US senator since the Reconstruction period that followed the Civil War.
1967 - Johnson appoints Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court, making him the first black Supreme Court Justice.
1968 - Marthin Luther King is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.
1990 - Douglas Wilder, the first black elected to lead a US state, becomes governor of Virginia.
June 2008 - Illinois Sen. Barack Obama captures the Democratic Presidential nomination, becoming the first black to lead a major US party into a race for the White House.