The print medium is a dying industry in the US and newspaper circulation is falling across the board. But Wednesday was a day of hope for the newspaper industry. For the first time that anyone can remember, there was a long queue at The Washington Post office to pick up souvenir copies of the newspaper that proclaimed Obama’s win. In Obama’s home town of Chicago, the local daily, the Chicago Tribune, sold 200,000 extra copies. The Washington Post ran an additional print run of 150,000 copies and The New York Times sold 50,000 copies more. (AFP picture)

Washington, Nov. 6: On the morning after, Teddy Andrews knew there was one place he needed to go to commemorate Barack Obama’s historic triumph: the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, where 40 years ago, before hundreds of thousands of African Americans, Martin Luther King Jr voiced his soaring dream of racial equality.

Grabbing a co-worker, Andrews, 44, walked from his office near Union Station all the way to one of Washington’s most iconic memorials.

On the spot where King stood, Andrews lay the front page of a newspaper proclaiming Obama’s victory, holding it in place with a black wingtip shoe while he snapped a photo with his phone.

“It’s a powerful moment,” said Andrews, as a woman leaned over to take a photo of the Obama button she placed next to the newspaper. “To stand where King stood, to show him what he did for us, not just as an African American but as an American. If it wasn’t for him, we wouldn’t have this today.”

Across the US yesterday, as the cathartic celebration gave way to the realisation that Obama’s victory was indeed no dream, the President-elect’s supporters marked the historic moment in quieter but no less joyous ways.

In offices and on street corners, at cafes, laundromats and public squares, friends and strangers hugged and laughed, repeating their favourite Obama refrains and speaking of witnessing something almost beyond words.

Everywhere Obama supporters assembled, it seemed, was a giddy sense that the country had achieved a milestone and therefore anything was possible. His most ardent admirers said they don’t need to wait for history to draw its conclusions or even for the senator from Illinois to move his family to the White House.

In breathless bursts, they rendered their own verdict: Obama’s victory had inspired millions and transformed the country. “I am 87 years old, and last night when that news came on, I cried like a baby,” said Beatrice P. Smith, Miss Bea to her friends, as she sat on a white plastic chair by the radiator in the community laundromat in Annapolis.

In Chicago, cab drivers honked their horns in celebration, and police officers went to work wearing Obama socks. Some downtown businesses gave employees the day off, and tourists flocked to Grant Park, the site of Obama’s election night rally.

“I think this will cure the racial divide,” said Matthew Nallet, a 31-year-old who runs a music production website.

Along 125th Street in Harlem, black America’s cultural capital, residents and tourists posed for photographs against a huge canvas painting of Obama that went up on a wall next to the famed Apollo Theater. Next door, the Apollo marquee announced in bold lettering: “Congratulations to President-elect Barack Obama.”

In the salon at the tony Beverly Hills Hotel in Beverly Hills, California, women talked Obama while having their hair done by celebrity stylist John Darin. “It’s like a new aura is going around,” he said.

In Scranton, Pennsylvania, a hardscrabble coal-mining town that is largely white, working-class and Democratic, some voters were so caught up in the moment that they touted Obama’s election as a panacea: a cure for everything, everywhere. They seemed to shrug off the tanking economy and two wars that the new President will inherit.

Rosemary Boland, a teachers’ union official, thought Obama might amend the No Child Left Behind education law. Jack Flanagan, a business manager, talked wistfully about lower taxes.

The city’s mayor, Christopher Doherty, hoped Obama would use federal funds to help fix Scranton’s bridges. “Having a Democrat in the White House will renew a focus on cities that has been lost during the past eight years.”

“It’s a new day,” the dispatcher at a waste management company announced to employees in Prince George’s County in Maryland over a two-way radio. “You can start on the back of the truck and become President of the United States.”

It was a day in which perfect strangers realised they had something in common. On Metro, a silver-haired man in a yellow rain slicker and a woman with salt-and-pepper hair fell into easy conversation as they waited at McPherson Square.

“Oh, may I see the picture?” Elaine Reed of Arlington county asked the man as he read a newspaper. The man obliged, noting how well he thought the photograph captured Obama’s triumphant moment. “Did you see him at Grant Park last night?” Reed asked. “It was like a sea of flowers.”