Growing up in Kentucky, Vic Bankston said she was forced to drink from blacks-only water fountains and sit in the backs of buses.

Even as recently as 1974, Bankston, who is 57 and an information technology consultant in Madison, said she was kept out of a whites-only skating rink while teaching school in the South.

Tuesday, she watched with tears as a biracial man who identifies as an African American became president.

"I almost can't breathe," she said, as she hugged friends at a Barack Obama party at the Coliseum Bar in Madison. "This is a long way from the back of a bus, a long way."

Democrat Obama, the son of a black Kenyan father and a white American mother from Kansas, became the first person of color to be elected president by beating Republican John McCain. While race did not overtly become an issue in the campaign, members of Madison's black community said it would be difficult to overstate the historic significance of his victory.

"This is an opportunity to rewrite history books," said Madison School Board member Johnny Winston Jr., 40, who is black. "We always tell kids they can be anything when they grow up, but with African-American children, you sometimes had to stop short of saying president."

Bankston said she was always confident Obama would win. Still, it was disheartening early in the evening to see so many Southern states go for McCain in such large numbers, she said. She attributed the lopsided McCain victories in part to lingering racism.

"Those of us from the South, we know exactly what it was about," she said. "Make no mistake about it."

In a national Gallup poll last month, 6 percent of voters said they were less likely to vote for Obama because of his race.

Mona Adams Winston, who organized the informal gathering of about 75 Obama supporters at the Coliseum Bar, was not letting anything get her down. "I would have loved a so-called landslide," she said, "but as long as it was by one vote, I'm OK with it."

Adams Winston, a community activist and Johnny Winston Jr.'s mother, brought her 88-year-old father, Lawrence Winston, with her.

"I have a slogan I like to use — 'from the slave cabin to the White House,' " said the elder Winston. "I remember a time when black people weren't allowed to vote. We have a lot to be thankful for."

Frances Huntley-Cooper, 57, who became the first — and so far only — black person elected mayor of a Wisconsin city when she took office for one term in Fitchburg in 1991, watched the election returns at the Obama party at Monona Terrace.

Huntley-Cooper said she finds it interesting that the country's history is full of examples where black mayors took over large cities when those cities were at their lowest points. Perhaps there is a parallel to Obama becoming president during a national financial meltdown, she said.

"The cities had hit rock bottom, so it gave (black mayors) a chance to show people they could be creative," she said. "Sometimes you need that different perspective. That's what we talk about when we talk about diversity."

Alysia Mann Carey, 19, a UW-Madison sophomore, voted in her first presidential election Tuesday and watched the returns from her dorm. "I can't even explain how proud and excited and happy I am," said Mann Carey, who is black. "It's a step toward getting rid of racism."

Victor L. Smith, 50, a Madison writer, said the country's textbooks often have whitewashed history, editing out black people. He was confident that wouldn't happen with Obama.

"It feels so good to have a mentor who's not erasable," he said.