“Many of the same people came here over 45 years ago for the March on Washington.”
“Their mothers, their fathers, their grandparents came here, black and white, and they want to be here to say to Barack Obama, ‘We’re with you.’ But also to come in the name of their forefathers and their foremothers,”
“It is unreal. But this is one of the most moving periods, one of the most moving moments for me in my lifetime.”
“When he [Obama] was born, people of color couldn’t register to vote in many quarters of the deep South,” he said. “They had to pass a literacy test, stand in unmovable lines, some people were beaten, jailed and some were even killed.”
“But look where we are,” Through the struggle, through the suffering, through the beatings, through the jailings, through so many deaths. We have now come the distance to elect a black man president of the United States of America.”

Rev. James Forbes of Manhattan’s Riverside Church, who marched with King to protest segregation, staging sit-ins at lunch counters added:

Obama’s inauguration is the fulfillment of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.
“Dr. King spoke of the prospect of ‘getting to the mountaintop,’ which meant that the conditions of justice for poor people and people of color will be realized,” “It feels almost as if this is the fulfillment of his prophecy.”

Maya Angelou, who became the northern coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in the 1960s at King’s request concluded by:

“I will be following every step, every nuance, every shade and shadow of the inauguration.”"I’m there wholeheartedly, I’m just not there physically, but there is nothing holding me back except for the fact that I’m 80 and I have various medical restraints,”