WASHINGTON - The members of the congregation are donning showy hats, dapper suits and even some traditional African garb as restless babies squawk amid the sermons and the hymns -- and yet it's not just another Sunday at the city's Trinity Episcopal Church.
Election day is just 48 hours away, and the predominately African-American church in the leafy northern reaches of D.C. is buzzing about it.
"We are excited not just because he's a black man, although that is certainly a thrill, but because he's intelligent, qualified, intellectual, trustworthy and inspirational -- he'll bring real hope to this country," says Raynold Mensah, a Liberian-born businessman who moved to the United States with his wife and two sons 18 years ago.
And while Rev. John Harmon's sermon doesn't delve deeply into politics this Sunday, he does have a subtle suggestion for his congregation.
"I won't tell you how to vote, but I do want you to vote right," he says to guffaws of laughter from the churchgoers.
Two hundred and thirty-two years and four months later, a nation born under the ideal that all men are created equal appears poised to elect its first black president in Democrat Barack Obama.
For African-Americans, it's a wondrous moment in time representing hope, vindication, an answer to some plaintive prayers and a belief that perhaps racism might finally be dying out in a country shamefully plagued by it throughout the course of its history.
"History's about to be made ... it just brings tears of joy to my eyes," Michelle Fox-Moorman, a stylist at the downtown Class Act Salon, says as she works on a client's hair.
"To see him walking down Pennsylvania Avenue during the inauguration -- it will just be great."
With those sorts of hopes and dreams resting on his shoulders, some wonder if an Obama presidency is bound to disappoint the millions of African-American voters who are casting their ballots for him -- or wishing they could.
"Everybody is going to expect him to be perfect but he'll be OK," says 13-year-old Ben Abor as he and his best friend do some dog-walking in the Maryland neighbourhood of Takoma Park across the state line from the Trinity Episcopal Church.
"And he's made me think that now I want to be the first African-American elected president who wasn't born in the U.S.," said the Ghana-born Abor with a broad smile as he pats his friend's dog, a rust-coloured mutt named Dr. Dre.
Toni-Michelle Travis, a political science professor specializing in race at Virginia's George Mason University, says an Obama presidency wouldn't be able to do much to focus specifically on African-Americans in his first years in office.
"But we can probably expect broad-based legislation that will help all Americans -- black, white, first-time citizens, the elderly," Travis said Sunday.
"The black community has the same issues as everyone else, except they're more dire due to their lower income levels -- they want affordable health care, they want to put their sons and daughters through university, they don't want their kids being sent into combat zones in Iraq, they want to be able to care for their elderly parents."
And Obama will likely be able to deliver on some of those fronts.
"Look for that kind of FDR type of legislation on health care and Social Security that will benefit everyone," she said.
But in the midst of all the joy and optimism among African-Americans as the election campaign winds down, there is also palpable dread about what could be in store if the polls are wrong and Obama doesn't make it to the White House on Tuesday.
Mensah confesses to frazzled nerves.
"I am anxious and afraid about what would happen, but the polls can't be wrong," he says as he prepares for his third grand-daughter's baptism at Trinity Episcopal.
Travis says she's also on edge.
"I feel personally that I am waiting to exhale, and for all African-Americans, there would be great disillusionment at the very minimum, disbelief, devastation and fears that the election had been stolen if Obama loses," Travis said.
Older black Americans are more nervous about Obama losing than their younger friends and relatives, she adds.
"The people in their 70s and 80s, who never thought they'd see this day come in their lifetime and are almost skeptical, they are really out there and active and getting after people to vote. But the younger generations have not experienced segregation, they have not seen American presidents or civil rights leaders assassinated, so they aren't as nervous."
Many have also pointed out -- including prominent members of the black community -- that African-Americans are hardly monolithic, and aren't voting for Obama simply because he's black. His party affiliation and political ideology are also playing major roles.
Black Americans are by far the most reliable voting bloc for the Democrats, with an estimated 90 per cent of African-American voters casting their ballots in favour of the Democrats in an ordinary election year. That figure has risen to 98 per cent amid Obama's run for the White House.
"Black people don't vote for candidates just because they are black. If Clarence Thomas ran for president, he would get five black votes," Michael Dyson, a Georgetown University sociology professor, said recently.
Travis agrees, but also says there's no denying Obama has become an iconic symbol to black Americans.
"He becomes the role model for a generation if he gets elected. We've been telling African-American children for years that they can be anything they want to be, knowing that wasn't actually true -- they apparently couldn't be president," she says.
"And now this is it, this is the highest point -- to have somebody in a position where millions of Americans have shown approval. He's illustrating to some little boy or little girl of meagre means that maybe they can be something, maybe if they stay in school, they can end up in Congress or they can run for president one day. And that's amazing and wonderful."
