US:Barack Obama says he is the only candidate who can overcome racial divisions, writes Denis Staunton
As Teshawnda Broome filed into the Williams-Brice stadium on Sunday with her two children, she joined a crowd of 29,000, most of them, like her, African- Americans.
Broome insisted, however, that she was not there to hear Oprah Winfrey but to see the candidate America's biggest media star was endorsing, Barack Obama.
"I want to be a part of history and he's willing to make a difference," she said.
Demand for tickets to see Winfrey and Obama in South Carolina was so great that the event was moved from an 18,000- seat hall into the stadium, where the huge crowd occupied fewer than a third of the seats.
On a balmy Sunday afternoon, many had come straight from church, dressed in their Sunday best and ready for a double dose of inspiration.
Obama's strategists are hoping that Winfrey, 75 per cent of whose daily viewers are women, will help to detach a key voting group from Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton.
"She would if she's not too pro- black," Broome said, "because they don't want to see that."
The son of a black African father and a white American mother, Obama claims that he is the only candidate who can overcome the racial divisions that still scar America.
White Americans, including many conservatives, have embraced him as a figure of racial unity, comparing him favourably to civil rights activists like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, whom some whites view as too aggressive in demanding justice for African-Americans.
Obama has faced criticism from black activists, some of whom have complained that he has "acted white" by shying away from racial controversies such as the imprisonment of six young black men in Louisiana known as the Jena Six.
If Obama is to win South Carolina's primary on January 26th, he must win a greater share of the black vote, which accounts for up to half of Democratic primary voters and is currently split between Obama and Clinton.
In this African-American audience, nobody doubted Obama's black credentials and many hailed the endorsement of America's most influential black woman as an argument that sealed the deal.
"Oprah is a great leader," said Carlos Chinn. "She's a person who has dignity. She's someone we can look up to. Everyone can look up to Oprah."
Any doubts about Winfrey's appeal evaporated the moment she arrived on stage and was greeted by a deafening roar as the entire crowd rose to its feet.
"It's amazing grace that brought me here," she said. "I was born a couple of states over in Mississippi, so I know something about growing up in the South when you were born in 1954."
Although Winfrey's appeal crosses the boundaries of race and class, she spoke on Sunday directly to an African-American audience, invoking Dr Martin Luther King as she urged them to ignore those who said it was too early for Obama to seek the White House.
"Dr King dreamed the dream, but we don't have to just dream the dream any more," she said.
"We get to vote that dream into reality by supporting a man who knows not just who we are, but who we can be."
Sounding like a natural political campaigner, Winfrey confronted each of the most powerful arguments against Obama's candidacy and demolished every one in a flourish of Oprah-speak, starting with the claim that he lacks political experience. "If you keep on doing the same thing the same way all the time, you'll get the same result," she said. "You've got to step out of the box."
After Winfrey's star turn, Obama was almost a let-down, delivering the same stump speech he gives a number of times every day in Iowa and New Hampshire and sometimes losing his connection with the audience for minutes at a time.
Towards the end of his speech, however, the candidate seemed to remember where he was and to whom he was talking, making an impassioned plea for better schools for the poor.
He declared that "I am no different" from the poor black children of South Carolina who are being robbed of their future.
Finally, he recalled the civil rights struggles, honouring those who stood up for justice so that he and Winfrey could stand where they are today.
"They stood up when it was risky, they stood when it was hard," he said to loud cheering. "They stood up when it wasn't popular . . . because a few stood up, a few thousand stood up, and then a few million stood up. Standing up for courage and conviction, they changed the world. South Carolina, we can change the world."