enlarge John Ewing/Staff Photographer

Leonard Cummings Sr., a longtime Portland resident, plans to attend Barack Obama’s inauguration in Washington, D.C., Tuesday.

enlarge The Associated Press

Traffic is diverted Saturday along the parade route on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington ahead of Tuesday’s inauguration.

SPECIAL INAUGURATION COVERAGE

WE HAVE A TEAM of four journalists in Washington this week to cover the historic inauguration of Barack Obama as the nation's 44th president.

LOOK FOR THEIR COVERAGE, including stories, photos, columns and live blogs, all this week in the newspaper and at pressherald.com.

THE PORTLAND PRESS HERALD plans expanded coverage of the inauguration on Tuesday and Wednesday. A special commemorative section will be published in next Sunday's Telegram.

Leonard Cummings Sr. has been marching for much of his life.

Marching in Portland. Marching in Augusta. Demonstrating wherever Mainers gathered to condemn racism, denounce injustice and call for an end to discrimination.

So when he heads to the National Mall in Washington on Tuesday for Barack Obama's inauguration, Cummings, 74, will be hearing the footsteps of all those who marched with and before him.

"That's what I'll take with me," he says. "Their pride and their ambition."

For African-Americans like Cummings, a retired telephone worker and lifelong Portland resident, the inauguration of America's first black president will be a national milestone with deeply personal meaning.

He and other veterans of the movement for racial equality in Maine speak with pride of the progress that has been made in combating prejudice and securing dignity over the past 50 years. But many say they never thought they would live to see a black person occupy the White House.

"Sometimes I wonder, did this happen, or am I dreaming?" says Sallie Chandler of Lebanon, chairwoman of the York County Commissioners and vice president of the Portland chapter of the NAACP.

More than 2 million people are expected to flock to Washington for Obama's inauguration. About 240,000 will hold tickets, distributed by members of Congress, for admission to a closed area at the foot of the Capitol steps and on the east end of the National Mall.

The remainder of the mall will be open to the public, and large Jumbotrons will broadcast images of the swearing-in and inaugural address.

Chandler, 63, has tickets and is driving to Maryland today with her husband and two family friends.

She'll miss the Martin Luther King Jr. Breakfast on Monday in Portland, an annual event sponsored by the NAACP.

But the Sunday departure will give her a chance to visit with family, including a 97-year-old aunt who proudly told Chandler that she voted for Obama on Nov. 4.

Like Obama, Chandler has seen her name on a ballot. She was elected county commissioner in 2006 and now serves as chairwoman of the five-member panel.

Back in 1995, Lebanon voters made her the first black woman elected to public office in Maine when they chose her as town clerk.

She credits her elections to the Mainers who looked past the color of her skin to consider what she believed in, and who she was as an individual. On a much larger scale, Chandler thinks voters across America did the same thing with Obama.

"We fear the unknown," she said. "It was nice to see the United States get past that, to see this individual, this family, and not be afraid."

Traveling to Maryland with Chandler will be Anita Talbot of Portland, whose husband, Gerald E. Talbot, became Maine's first black state legislator in 1972.

Anita Talbot said she and her three daughters attended Jimmy Carter's inauguration in 1977, and she likens Obama to Carter, who in her eyes was a very human, personal and unassuming president.

"He's going to be decent and honest," she said of Obama. "Isn't it wonderful to be able to relate to him and his mother and his mother-in-law?"

Gerald Talbot plans to stay in Portland for the Martin Luther King Jr. Breakfast on Monday and fly to Maryland later in the day.

He said he felt compelled to attend Obama's inauguration because of the long, hard struggle for civil rights that led to the event.

Talbot participated in the historic civil rights march in Washington in 1963. He's a former president of the Portland NAACP chapter. And he remembers the frustration when black leaders such as Shirley Chisholm and Jesse Jackson set their sights on the White House but fell short.

"They had the charisma, the knowledge and the personality," he said. "They belonged there, but it just wasn't happening."

Talbot says he's also thinking these days of close friends from Portland who fought...