More than three-quarters of US citizens consider Barack Obama's inauguration as US president Tuesday as one of the most historically significant in the history of the United States, according to a poll released Monday by the US Gallup institute, dpa reported.
Some 33 per cent of US citizens in fact gave the inauguration of the first black president the top ranking of "most important" inauguration in US history.
A separate survey by CNN showed that over two-thirds of African Americans consider that the vision of civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. is being fulfilled some 46 years after his famous "I have a dream" speech.
"I have a dream, that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character," King said in 1963.
According to CNN, 69 per cent of the African Americans consulted think this dream has come true.
In a survey that was done in March, eight months before Obama's electoral triumph, only 34 per cent of African Americans believed that King's dream had been fulfilled.
Decreasing numbers of US citizens think that racism is an important social problem, according to an opinion poll that the daily Washington Post published Monday.
This said that 26 per cent of respondents believed that racism remained a big problem, compared to more than 50 per cent who called it a big problem in a similar survey in 1996.
Among the respondents in the current poll, 44 per cent of blacks believed that racism remained a big problem, while only 22 per cent of whites responded similarly.