AP

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- Waving blue campaign signs and cheering their support, thousands of people gathered to hear Sen. Barack Obama on Friday evening as the Democratic White House hopeful made his first presidential campaign visit to South Carolina.

Obama was keenly aware of the significance of appearing before a crowd in Columbia just a few days after a black South Carolina legislator said if Obama won the nomination, it would lead to losses for Democrats in Congress and governorships.

"Everybody's entitled to their opinion," Obama said. "But I know this -- that when folks were saying we're going to march for our freedom, somebody said we can't do that."

And when others said blacks couldn't sit at lunch counters, blacks did that, said Obama, who ended his thought with: "Yes, we can." The crowd then started chanting the line.

Obama also touched on the diversity of the nearly 3,000 people at the event, saying it would have been unheard of a generation ago.

"Twenty years ago, nobody would have believed this crowd right here in South Carolina," Obama said.

Obama, who has one more event in South Carolina before returning to Washington on Saturday for an expected vote on the Iraq war resolution, said significant numbers of troops should be coming home from the Middle East by March 31, 2008 because the U.S. effort is not working. "If people don't want to get along, we can't force them militarily to get along," Obama said.

The campaign stop was eagerly awaited in this early voting state where half the Democratic primary voters are black. Party officials ran out of tickets early. Lachlan McIntosh, executive director of the state Democratic Party, said blacks picked up more than half of the 1,000 tickets the party distributed.

Debra Rotan-Lype stood at the front of the line that would stretch a half block waiting to get inside. She wanted her daughter, 10-year-old Nikki, to see Obama first hand and get a close-up look at politics. "I like his views. ... I think he is an excellent speaker," Rotan-Lype said.

Adell Adams, 65, liked what she heard from Obama, although the black Columbia woman was not ready to commit to him as her favorite for 2008. "I think he was right on time," Adams said. "I think he's really looking good."

White voters have been anticipating Obama's visit, too, notes Francis Marion University political scientist Neal Thigpen, who closely follows South Carolina presidential politics.

Since 1980, he said, he can't recall any primary candidate drawing such a crowd, which will likely be filled with curious and undecided voters.

White Democrats have found something in Obama that they've been looking for since President John F. Kennedy, Thigpen said.

"I don't think they thought the Kennedy they were looking for would be a black man," Thigpen said.

Obama will leave the Columbia with the endorsement of at least one state House member. Rep. Todd Rutherford, a black Columbia lawyer, said he'd signed onto the campaign Friday after meeting with Obama.

And former state Democratic Party Chairman Dick Harpootlian said he's seriously considering endorsing Obama. Harpootlian has been a frequent critic of U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York, who makes her first campaign stop in Columbia on Monday at Allen University, a historically black college.

Obama also was set to visit Claflin University on Saturday, a historically black college. Obama moved that event up an hour so he could get back to Washington for a possible vote on the Iraq war resolution.

That vote prompted U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., to change his South Carolina campaign plans. Dodd's campaign said he would make Columbia breakfast stop, but left his other two stops to a surrogate.