Richard O. Jones

In 1932, 1936 and 1940, James Ford, a labor organizer, ran as the Communist Party's vice-presidential candidate. Though the party gained less than 1 percent of the vote in 1932, many Blacks across the nation felt energized by the prospects and began to seek and obtain political offices.

Eldridge Cleaver, a leader of the militant Black Power movement, ran for president in 1968 on an anti-Vietnam War platform. The same year, comedian and activist Dick Gregory ran for president for the Freedom and Peace Party, which had broken off from Cleaver's Peace and Freedom Party. That year, Charlene Mitchell, another communist, became the first African American woman on a presidential ballot -- she ran in two states.

Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to Congress, was also the first African American to vie for a major party's nomination, attempting to become the Democratic party's candidate for president in 1972.

With her, it was something of a symbolic political exercise that people, including Blacks, didn't think was possible. Rev. Jesse Jackson, won primary elections in five states during his 1984 bid for the Democratic nomination and in at least 11 states in a repeat bid in 1988, when he was briefly considered the front-runner.

Activist Lenora Fulani was the first Black woman to have her name on the ballot in 50 states at the 1988 election. Alan Keyes ran for the Republican nomination in 1996 and in 2000.

Rev. Al Sharpton campaigned for the Democratic nomination for the 2004 presidential election, a campaign in which Sen. Carol Moseley Braun was also briefly a candidate. Cynthia McKinney, an African American former congresswoman from Georgia, is the Green Party's presumptive nominee for 2008.

While none have matched Obama in national support and nearness to the inauguration speech, all have gripped the baton he's now running with.

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