Obama made history when he was elected the first US African-American president on Tuesday. The prophecy goes back exactly 40 years ago when a much-beloved American leader, Senator Robert F Kennedy, while mourning his brother’s assassination, made his prophecy on Voice of America in 1968. “There is no question about it,” Kennedy said. “In the next 40 years, a Negro can achieve the same position that my brother (former President John F Kennedy) had.” Those were troubled times in the US. White extremists were still lynching blacks in America’s South and segregation had only been abolished. Kennedy said: “Prejudice would exist and probably would continue … but we have tried to make progress and we are making progress. We are not going to accept that status quo.”