In Chicago, happy to make history

Barack Obama supporters packed Grant Park for the election night rally in Chicago yesterday. Hundreds of thousands more lined the lakefront and the Magnificent Mile, watching on televisions or listening through loudspeakers. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

CHICAGO - They flew in from Seattle and Louisville, Ky., or just took the subway from the South Side.

They wore Barack Obama hats and T-shirts and buttons, carried Obama dolls and waved Obama signs.

An estimated 240,000 people packed into Grant Park's Hutchinson Field to watch the first African-American ever elected president deliver his acceptance speech. Tens of thousands more packed into another nearby field and lined Michigan Avenue, watching on giant TV screens.

Many of them wore pins that said simply, "I was there."

The Windy City went wild last night. A downtown skyscraper, the Blue Cross building, spelled out USA in white lights. The grand hotels of Michigan Avenue, 40 years ago the site of riots during the Democratic Convention, were festooned with red-white-and-blue bunting.

And at 10 p.m. Central Time, as CNN projected Obama to be the next president of the United States, the crowd let out a roar. Some people cried, and others hugged, as they waved American flags in the air.

"It's the front row of history, literally, today," said Tom Krieglstein, 28, of Chicago, who arrived at Grant Park at 7:30 p.m. Monday, spending the night outdoors to be first in line to get a seat.

Archie Garomondeh, a 27-year-old Liberian-American, flew to Chicago from Louisville yesterday morning, just for a chance to take part.

"I wanted to be here to be a part of making history, and I want to be on the ground where the history will be made," he said.

And Teri McClain, 41, flew in from Seattle and spent the afternoon wandering through the crowds wearing a white sandwich board reading, "Please take me as your guest to the rally." She had at least seven Obama buttons along her neckline, an Obama T-shirt, an Obama doll in her front pocket, and an American flag in her back pocket; she said she has been to 18 Obama rallies, has hugged him three times, and has 17 Obama autographs.

"I got hooked when he went to Key Arena [in Seattle] in February," she said. "He has brought so many people together."

Inside Grant Park, the tens of thousands of people, most of them young and most of whom obtained tickets through an Obama website sign-up, stood shoulder to shoulder, watching the televised news with increasing giddiness as state after state fell to Obama.

"I'm a history teacher, and I wanted to see history made," said Sophia Logothetis, 27, who teaches eighth grade in the Chicago public schools. "I'm so glad the next time our history books are printed, this is the next chapter."

The crowd in the park and on the streets was strikingly multiracial, and many said they never thought they would see an African-American elected president of the United States, a nation with a troubled racial history stretching back to slavery.

"I figured progress would come about with a senator here or a governor there, but I didn't think the top rung was for anybody but a Caucasian," said Ervin Ricks, 54, a retired Chicago police officer.

Eden Jean, 31, joined the crowd even though she isn't an American citizen, she is Ethiopian, but is married to an American and raising their 2-year-old daughter in Chicago.

"For my daughter, this is so significant to see that there's no limits," she said. "I never thought I would see this. Not in my lifetime."

On Congress Parkway, where the crowds waited for access to the fields, there was a man posing for photographers wearing a pinstriped baseball uniform with the name Obama and the number 08, a young woman selling T-shirts saying "Obama 08/Grant Park/I Was There," and a teenager playing an electronic version of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" on his guitar. On Roosevelt Boulevard, a union hung a banner reading "Local ironworkers support Barack Obama for president," and a station wagon drove by covered in quotes from Martin Luther King Jr., blaring Obama speeches from a bullhorn.

On its roof, a giant picture of Obama with the words, "The dream comes true."

Michael Paulson can be reached at mpaulson@globe.com.