I’ll use this pulpit while I have it and thank the team that helped make EbonyJet.com’s coverage possible.

If all you’ve seen is this blog, you’ve missed a bunch - slide shows by Dudley Brooks, galleries by Valerie Goodloe, perspective from Del Walters and DeAngelo Starnes.

But what you don’t see are the people who stayed in Chicago and made it all make sense for presentation to you dear readers.

So special kudos to Linda Johnson Rice, our CEO, for sending us and giving EbonyJet.com the opportunity. Senior Editor Terry Glover for running the show while I was gone, National Sales Director Debra White for getting it all paid for, Brandi Davis for keeping the design of the Convention 08 section coherent, and to Lenora Blackamore for keeping the technology going so people could actually see it all.

Jennifer Hudson sings the Star Spangled Banner

Well-practiced after her initial flub, gymnast Sean Johnson opened the ceremony with the Pledge of Allegiance, followed by Jennifer Hudson, who corrected those pitch issues and started the day off with a bang.

Quite a few people during the week questioned whether Rev. Jesse Jackson would show up to the convention, especially since his son, Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. - a national campaign chair and early supporer - took the spotlight on stage earlier in the week, a position Jackson Sr. may have held in conventions past.

But the senior Jackson, comments aside, has always been an Obama supporter, and not only did he show up, as I mentioned in an earlier post he was rock star and along with Cory Booker, the most sought after by news cameras and autograph seekers. The Reverend pulled me and Michelle Norris of National Public Radio aside on the stadium floor to remind us of the history that wasn’t being spoken publicly that night.

He made the point that the event surrounding King’s “I Have a Dream” speech was not a celebration at all but a dangerous protest. He contrasted the number of Black sports and TV celebrities in the stadium with the fact that there were only a handful of Black professional athletes in 1963 and almost no African Americans at all on television, in films and definitely not playing at the Division I college level. Jackson also noted the major businessmen in the crowd and the number of Black people with special seating because of their status as fundraisers and major bundlers in contrast to the economic state of the Black community at the time of the March on Washington.

He said all that not to put a damper on the moment but to put emphasis on how far this nationa has come in those 45 years, with the caveat that after the celebration was over - and even if Obama ultimately wins- there is still a lot of work in the trenches that needs to be done, and that in the joy of victory we can’t forget people who are still left out. It was appropriate perspective.

If the official speeches did not emphasize the history of the moment, people in the audience kept it in focus.

Marian Wright Edelman, head of the Children’s Defense Fund, looked further back to African American freedom by prominently wearing a Harriet Tubman cameo.

Dudley Brooks organizes a delegate photo at the Denver Convention Center.

This morning before all the madness, Dudley Brooks, Ebony photo director, along with Kevin Chappell, senior editor of JET organized a rapidly arranged photo of African American delegates.

The problem was finding a place for them to shoot that would be central to everyone’s location, and then the bigger problem - finding the delegates, who were on a mission to buy t-shirts before they leave in the morning.

The full text of Joe Biden's nomination acceptance speech.

Partially because convention speeches are completed at the last minute, but mostly because PR types don’t want the media to preempt any news that might be made before a newsmaker makes it, reporters sitting near the podium receive a paper copy each speaker’s address just minutes - sometimes second - before the speaker goes on.

All carry the words: Embargoed for Delivery, meaning the upon acceptance, the press makes a gentleman’s agreement not to talk about or publish what’s in the speech until it begins. In theory, in this new age of the web, you could print the ending before it’s all over, but if anyone found out, you’d never get another speech on paper again.

Bragging rights: Somewhere in a box in a storage room, I still have the signed and marked up (by Jackson) copy of the speech he gave at the 1988 Democratic Convention. For my kids, not for Ebay. But I’ll take bids on this Biden speech.

Charles Barkley outside the Pepsi Center.

Because my mother-in-law asks about these things and she’ll be at my house when I get back:

Seen in and around the convention in the last hour:

Charles Barkley, Rudy Giuliani,  Mitt Romney, actor Mathew Modine, legendary Gary mayor Richard Hatcher, the Rev. Joseph Lowery, San Francisco district attorney Kamala Harris, The Wire actor Wendell Pierce (Bunk), Louis Gossett, Jr., ER actress and Tina Turner dancer Gloria Reuben (kinda hot),  CNN hosts Campbell Brown (skinny) and Anderson Cooper (my wife says he’s hot, so does my gay neighbor).

At hot bistro, ALTO in the Larimer Historic District, Senate candidate and DNC keynoter Mark Warner threw a reception that in a matter of mere minutes packed completely full. According to staffer Craig Kirby, the plan was for an intimate 200 key supporters. Nevertheless, 1500 people RSVP’d

That left leading political and financial lights like Rep. Jim Moran, former DNC chair Chuck Manatt and millionaire hotel developer R. Donahue Peebles standing either in the 90 degree heat waiting on cue to get in or held in a secondary room where Warner decidely was not.

I got in, though.

But such is the phenomenal popularity of the former governor who has built a loyal core of supporters who  would follow him over a hill if asked. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, Joe Biden’s foreign policy experience aside, had Mark Warner nto been running for Senate, he would have been the VP pick.