WASHINGTON, Nov 5: In a country that coined the term “lynching” for extrajudicial murder of blacks and poor whites, Barack Hussein Obama made history on Tuesday when he became the first African American to have been elected president of the United States of America.

African Americans described the victory as a “realisation of Martin Luther King’s dream” — a reference to the 1963 speech of the iconic civil rights leader spelling out his vision for an America cleansed of racism.

Hundreds of African Americans who grew up in the segregated south of the United States burst into tears during a march in Atlanta, Georgia, to celebrate Obama’s triumph. Atlanta is King’s birthplace as well as his final resting place.

Mr King’s daughter, Bernice King, was one of the first to grasp that history was in the making when shortly after 9pm (US eastern time) she urged the crowds to change their chant from “yes we can” to “yes we have”.

Mr Obama, 47, a first-term senator from Illinois, defeated Senator John McCain of Arizona, 72, a Vietnam war hero with 50 years of public service.

Barack Obama won 349 electoral votes while Mr McCain got 173. He needed 270 to win.

Obama won 63,110,820, or 52 percent of the popular vote, against Mr McCain’s 55,862,692 (46 percent). This gave Mr Obama a lead of 7.3 million votes in popular mandate as well.

In a powerful acceptance speech in front of a crowd of an estimated 125,000 people jammed into Chicago’s Grant Park on Tuesday night, president-elect Obama said a new dawn of American leadership was at hand.

“It’s been a long time coming. But tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America,” he said.

Barack Obama promised change, not just in America but also in how the lone superpower deals with the rest of the world.

“All of those watching tonight from beyond our shores, in the parliament and in the palaces, those huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of the world, our stories are singular but our destiny is shared,” he said.

“A new dawn of American leadership is at hand,” he added to roars of applause. “To those who would tear the world down, we will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security, we support you.”

Mr Obama also noted that among his voters was 106-year old Ann Nixon Cooper. “She was born just a generation past slavery; a time … when someone like her couldn’t vote for two reasons — because she was a woman and because of the colour of her skin.”

Earlier, Senator McCain conceded the presidential race to Senator Obama, saying the Democrat has achieved a “great thing” for himself and the country with his victory.

Flanked by wife Cindy and running-mate Sarah Palin, Mr McCain spoke to supporters outside the Arizona Biltmore Hotel where he got married and launched his political career more than 30 years ago, saying the “American people have spoken and they have spoken clearly”.

John McCain urged his supporters to put aside partisan differences and work to get “the country moving again”.

He stressed the epochal nature of the election, noting that in 1901 President Theodore Roosevelt’s invitation to black author Booker T. Washington to dine at the White House had been viewed as an insult in some quarters.

“And after a little over 100 years, the United States has elected its first black president.”

One day after the election President George Bush vowed “complete cooperation” with the incoming administration.

“No matter how they cast their ballot, all Americans can be proud of the history that was made yesterday,” Mr Bush said on Wednesday in a statement from the Rose Garden.

Noting that Senator Obama’s election showcases “the triumph of the American story”, the president said: “This moment is especially uplifting for a generation of Americans who witnessed the struggle for civil rights with their own eyes — and four decades later see [that] dream fulfilled.”

And Mr Bush did not have to go far to see the impact of this victory on the American people. Thousands gathered outside the White House after a little before midnight and stayed there all night, chanting: “Yes, we did. Yes, we did,” echoing Mr Obama’s slogan: “Yes, we can. Yes, we can change America.”

But this change was not easy, not for Mr Obama at least who had to overcome many disadvantages that would have sunk a man of weaker nerves.

Mr Obama is the son of a Muslim economist from Kenya and of a white woman from Kansas, who twice married Muslim men, first a Kenyan and then an Indonesian. She also lived in Indonesia and Pakistan.

Mr Obama lived in Indonesia with his mother and stepfather. His critics claimed that Barack Obama used to say “Islamic prayers” at his school in Indonesia where students were required to pray together on Fridays.

During a time when Muslims were presented as villains and treacherous, it was no easy feat to overcome these handicaps. Some of his opponents flooded the internet with slogans and songs that rhymed Obama with Osama.

But the voters ignored all these supposedly minus points on his resume and elected him president with an overwhelming majority.

Mr Obama even won Virginia, a state where Charles Lynch and William Lynch formalised extrajudicial murders of black slaves and poor whites in the 18th and 19th centuries, later known as lynching.

And he received much support from America’s white majority in his effort to be the first black occupant of the White House, with four in 10 whites voting for him.

During a long, trying election campaign spread over 21 months, Mr Obama also introduced two new concepts that could revolutionise American politics forever: bringing together ethnic minorities and depending on small donors for finance.

Although he maintained good relations with interest groups and traditional financiers, the president-elect went beyond them, reaching out to small donors, asking for $5 to $25 each from millions of supporters to meet his astronomical expenses.

In September, he collected a record-shattering $150 million. Overall, his campaign raised more than $600 million, equalling what all the candidates from both major parties collected in private donations in 2004.

The president-elect also proved those wrong who said that white Americans will never vote for a black man.

Statistics showed four out of 10 white voters voted for Mr Obama. Still, he did not win a majority of white votes; no Democrat has since Lyndon Johnson in 1964.

But he ran equal to the last three Democratic candidates for president among white voters, and even slightly better than the party’s 2004 nominee.

The results proved that for many whites a troubled economy and US failures in Iraq and in the “war against terrorism” were greater concerns than race. Even small-town whites, considered most resistant to the black political newcomer from Chicago, voted for Mr Obama.

The Democratic candidate showed that he can appeal to black voters without losing whites, and to white voters without losing blacks.

But one factor that helped him the most was the disillusion with the Bush administration. National exit polls showed that nearly three-quarters of voters disapproved of President Bush’s performance.

FEARS UNFOUNDED: Fears that Obama’s Muslim connection will scare away Jewish voters in Ohio and Florida also turned out to wrong as he won both states. Also wrong were media reports that Latino voters were reluctant to vote for African-American or women.