The men who make up the Breakfast Club have seen a lot.

All are retired Atlantans, in their 60s and 70s. They attended black colleges before getting MBAs and Ph.D.s from places such as the University of Michigan and Harvard.

Rich Addicks/AJC (ENLARGE)

'It's almost as if we were tearing down the barriers that have separated us. It felt so good. It felt surreal,' said Smyrna's Kyle Pardner, who spent part of Wednesday on Auburn Avenue with son Kwensi.

Rich Addicks/AJC (ENLARGE)

T-shirts for sale at Handbags and More inside the Sweet Auburn Curb Market connect the dots between the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s leadership of the Civil Rights movement and Barack Obama's candidacy.

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Some even spent time in jail — for holding their ground and demanding their due during the civil rights movement. Yet, the fact that Barack Obama, a black man, has just clinched the Democratic Party's nomination for president of the United States is something they never saw coming.

"We are all pre-Civil Rights," said Ernie Oglesby, 77. "We came up in the '30s and '40s, so we were in the apartheid system. We couldn't even envision something like this happening in our lifetime."

So, on Wednesday morning at the McDonald's on Cascade Road, there was a certain giddiness in the air. It was finally official — Obama had secured the nomination.

Even the one member of the club who backed Hillary Clinton — and was teased mercilessly for it — felt a deep sense of pride: "I'm a black man, and I am glad to see it," William T. Robie said.

Plain and simple, Obama — son of a black Kenyan and a white woman from Kansas — made history Tuesday. It was an accomplishment that resonated in Atlanta, a cradle of the civil rights movement and longtime black mecca.

"This is the most exciting event in black history," said Ed Irons, dean emeritus of the school of business at Clark Atlanta University. "Here is a man that has been able to weather all of the arrows the Clintons threw at him and all of the things he had no control over, like Jeremiah Wright."

Ryan Stewart — who along with his brother Doug form "The Two Live Stews," a nationally syndicated radio sports show — said he received dozens of text messages from friends about the nomination before proclaiming Wednesday "Obama Day."

In Atlanta, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. crafted the strategy behind the civil rights movement, Obama's ascension is viewed by many as payment for black struggles over the years.

At the Sweet Auburn Curb Market near the King Center, a series of T-shirts told the story. One depicted Obama as "The Dream" and King as "The Dreamer."

"I have never been more proud of our nation, as a major political party offered the American people choices that transcend restrictions of gender and race," said the Rev. Joseph Lowery, an Obama campaign co-chairman in charge of voter registration. "While the nomination of Barack Obama certainly does not signal the end of racial disparities, it emphatically signals the beginning of a new era in race relations."

Christine King Farris, King's only surviving sibling, said while her brother was leading the movement, there were natural doubts that any of them would ever witness what Obama has done.

"Few African-Americans believed that our generation would live to see a black presidential candidate carry the banner of one of the major political parties. But that day has arrived," Farris said. Juanita Abernathy, a confidante of King and the wife of the late Ralph David Abernathy, said she literally cried watching Obama's Tuesday night speech.

"This is really what the movement was about. This is what we fought for. We've been loyal citizens of this country. We have paid our dues. I've prayed for this, and I didn't think I'd live to see it. I'm just so sorry my husband and Dr. King didn't live to see it. This is what our forebears suffered and died for. This is our time."

'Things evolve'

Leon McGee and Charles Delk, both 67 and Army vets, couldn't stop talking about Obama on one of their regular visits to the Cascade Driving Range. Both were born in 1940 and remember the last days of World War II.

"I remember people saying they wanted Mr. Roosevelt to stay in office because he was the white person in the White House who could give them the best deal," Delk said. "They had something in common with him. Now, I have something in common with Obama."

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and Emory University professor Natasha Trethewey said that, while she's pleased with Obama's win, she feels there's a danger some will think racism and discrimination have been conquered.

"That ignores the lives of poor, working-class people,'' said Trethewey, whose mother was black and father is white. Trethewey's award-winning work focuses on her mother and on black Civil War soldiers in Mississippi.

Everett Garden, 42, sat in the Magic Johnson Starbucks on Cascade Road and recounted how his father, born in 1919, suffered after returning home from serving in World War II.

Garden said his father had to get permission from white neighbors to move into a Cleveland neighborhood. "I wish my father could have lived to see this. This is our highest moment," he said.

But while Ryan Stewart, 34, said he found the moment "incredible," he said he was not surprised.

"I did think it would happen in my lifetime because things evolve and more doors open now than they did for our parents' generation," Stewart said. "It couldn't be a better time than right now."

In a way, Reco McDaniel said, Obama's nomination will serve as a challenge to the black community.

"If a black man can get the Democratic nomination, what limits do we have as a society? We can't play the race card anymore," he said. "As a race, we are excited. But deep down, there are no more excuses for us."