Along with Mrs Obama, the Pepsi Centre audience was to hear last night from Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, daughter of the late John F Kennedy, 36th President of the United States. He was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963, after 1,000 days in office.

The Obama campaign for the presidency has been constantly compared to Kennedy’s, with many commentators and analysts saying this has been the most electrifying presidential elections process they’ve witnessed since then. Caroline was going to pay tribute in speech to her uncle, Edward (Ted) Kennedy, long-time US Senator from Massachusetts. Jesse Jackson jnr, son of the Chicago-based civil rights leader who made a bid for his party’s nomination in 1984, was also scheduled to speak last night. The younger Jackson is a member of the US House of Representatives, from his home state of Illinois. Obama is himself a first term Senator from Illinois. And the opening night’s proceedings would also have heard a videotaped message from former president (1976-1980) Jimmy Carter of Georgia.

A statement issued by the convention organisers yesterday said Mrs Obama would have stressed the virtues of family in her speech last night. This is part of what makes up the core of the Obama campaign for the presidency. Her mother would have been among the more than 5,000 people in the audience at the Pepsi Centre last evening. The convention would have kicked off officially at 3 p.m. Denver time, two hours behind Eastern Caribbean time, and was scheduled to run until 10 p.m. here. During the morning yesterday, there were a number of major specialised caucuses as a variety of the party’s constituent elements—including special interest groups, state delegations and ethnic communities—met to fine-tune their own messages on which to base their own support for the Obama presidency. Prominent among them was an African American caucus which was held at the Colorado Convention Centre, about ten blocks away from the centre of the action here all this week.

At that caucus, which is to reconvene tomorrow at the same venue, speakers addressed major issues affecting black people in the US, including the issue of jobs, urban renewal and prosperity, education and the issue of calls for changes to the criminal justice system. This, advocates say, significantly disadvantages black men in particular. Addressing that session, Marc Moreal, president of the National Urban League, highlighted an Urban Renewal plan, which he said Obama had endorsed. For his part, Obama has said his address at his acceptance of the nomination Thursday was going to focus on conveying what he called “a sense of urgency that so many families are feeling across the country”. That urgency, he said in remarks reported Sunday in the Denver Post newspaper, he would also address by presenting “a clear choice between continuing the same economic policies that have caused record foreclosures, rising unemployment, rising inflation, flat and declining incomes and wages, and a new approach to approach to economic policies which I believe will create prosperity, growth and fairness”. Obama will become the first black American to receive the nomination from one of the two major parties as its candidate for the presidency, when he steps to the podium on Thursday night.

His efforts so far have surpassed those of Jackson two decades ago, and of the late Shirley Chisolm, a congresswoman from Brooklyn, New York, who had Barbadian roots. She made her unsuccessful bid to win the nomination in 1972. On day two of the convention today, scheduled caucuses will feature Faith, Youth and Disability advocates, and delegates at the main plenary are expected to hear from Obama’s archrival for this nomination, former presidential wife Hillary Clinton, among others.