This is young John Thompson, as he was more than a half-century ago in Columbia, S.C.:

"We went to the back of the bus because that's where we belonged."

And this is Pastor John Thompson today, preaching Sunday to his flock in the elegant sanctuary at Park Hill United Methodist Church:

"We don't have to be afraid anymore, or take the back seat anymore . . . this is what true revolution is about."

Whatever America's first African-American president, Barack Obama, means by "change," a chunk of it has already happened.

It's the kind of transformation that, on Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, inspired Thompson, 63, to title his sermon "A Dream Realized" - lifting King's famous hope to the realm of mission accomplished.

It's the kind of change that 80-year-old church member Cora Fishburn could only express by flinging her arms wide, as if to hug the whole world: "I didn't think I'd live to see it," she said of Obama's presidency. "Sometimes, I don't even believe it. But it came."

Denver churches, like the rest of America, poised this weekend to turn the corner on history. The moment was especially keen at Thompson's church, where the flock is evenly multi-ethnic, where King once preached, where a member of the congregation is Carlotta Walls LaNier, a member of the Little Rock Nine, the group that upended segregated education in this country in the 1950s.

In this church especially, members savored the sweetness of a black man taking the mantle of the presidency.

"Now, black boys and girls can see there's a model of excellence to follow," Thompson said before the service.

This was Dr. King's dream of equality and opportunity - his vision of a "beloved community" that was dreamed of even during the height of slavery.

In his sermon, Thompson traced King's beloved community to its roots - starting with Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal to John Kennedy's New Frontier to Lyndon Johnson's Great Society.

And what of Obama's pledge to bring everyone together, including, non-Democrats?

Later, I asked Thompson if he thought King's "beloved community," rooted in the New Deal, has a place for Ronald Reagan's "shining city on a hill."

"The people who represent them have to reach out (to us)," Thompson replied.

In other words, conservatives have to make their case to the black community. But since the time of Roosevelt, he added, African-Americans have been "fiercely loyal" to Democratic causes - which won't soon change.

For Thompson, a retired Air Force colonel, the right things have already changed. The past was his youth in the Deep South - a world where his father was a bellhop and his mother a domestic worker with a gentle, resigned acceptance that "God must have favored the white people."

Now, history has taken a turn from which there's no turning back. Thompson, with some wonder in his voice, puts it this way: "The hands that picked cotton were able to pick the president of the United States."

torkelsonj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5055