PROVIDENCE – Don’t find refuge in cynicism – get out there and “redesign the Democratic space,” U.S. Sen. Barack Obama told an overflow crowd at Brown University last night, where he delivered the Gov. Frank Licht Lecture.

Quoting the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Obama said, ``The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

“I want to change the state and direction of this country. It starts with Sheldon Whitehouse, right here in Rhode Island, right now," says Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., at a campaign event at Rhode Island College last night.

The Providence Journal / Bill Murphy

But that just doesn’t happen on its own, Obama added. ``It bends because we put our hand on that arc, and bend it towards justice. This is what we have to remember if we’re going to recapture this Democratic process. That’s the kind of work I intend to do until I take my last breath, and I hope you guys are going to be partners with it.”

Obama, the junior U.S. senator from Illinois and the only black senator in Congress, gave his speech at Brown after appearing on behalf of Democratic Senate candidate Sheldon Whitehouse at a Rhode Island College rally and fundraiser.

The crowd waiting to see Obama at the Salomon Center began forming at 4 p.m. and eventually snaked across the campus green to George Street. The doors opened at 8 p.m. and closed at 8:30, when all but the reserved seats in the 650-seat auditorium were full.

The crowd surged forward and people began banging on the door and chanting, ‘Let us in! Let us in!’ Another 600 people watched Obama on a live simulcast at Sayles Hall, but many others were turned away or left in disappointment.

When Obama finally arrived at 9:30 (a canceled flight had thrown off his entire schedule in Rhode Island), he received a standing ovation and prolonged cheers.

“He’s the hot young star of the Democratic Party,” said Darrell West, Brown’s Taubman Center director and professor of political science.

Obama has been in demand since he garnered widespread media attention following his keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. That even led many to pin their hopes on him as a future presidential candidate.

West said Taubman had been trying to get Obama on its speaker roster ``for about a year.”

“When I first talked to his scheduling person, they said he was getting about 300 invitations a week,” West said. (The fact that Obama’s brother-in-law is Brown’s new basketball coach may have scored points in Taubman’s favor.)

Obama’s lecture explored the question, ‘What values do we hold as Americans?’ and examined “the mismatch between our values and our politics.” That mismatch “has bred an enormous cynicism in this country,” Obama said, ``and created a situation where many people – particularly young people, think that politics are about power, not about mission.”

Obama suggested “sloughing off that cynicism” through a sense of hope “that you can reimagine and reconceive what American looks like.” He said that depends on the generation in the audience, and he urged them to “get out there and make it happen.”

Obama devoted most of his time to dialogue with those who came to see him. His answers lasted five or ten minutes per question and ranged from the instructive example of Massachusetts universal health care, to improved racial relations in the past 25 years.

He invoked the same occasional wit he had demonstrated during the lecture.

“Hey,” said one Brown student as he stepped up to the mike.

“Hey dude, what’s up?” Obama replied, drawing laughs.

Earlier in the night, at the Whitehouse fundraiser, Obama sounded a hopeful note.

He said that among American voters — and, in particular, among those likely to vote Democrat this fall — "there is this sense, not of giddiness, but of seriousness of purpose," the Democratic senator from Illinois said. "A sense that we have a set of challenges before us and we’ve got to grow up as a country."

Obama’s remarks touched on Iraq, oil prices, North Korea, global warming, health care, education and poverty — in general, Democrats’ laundry list of reasons to turn Republicans in Congress out of office.

"Sometimes we have a tendency to get comfortable in our misery," Obama said. "But that’s something I’ve had enough of. ... I want to do something about it. I want to change the state and direction of this country. It starts with Sheldon Whitehouse, right here in Rhode Island, right now."

Obama’s talk began more than two hours after the event’s announced start time of 5:30. When the senator arrived, he said he had to drive from Newark, N.J., because his flight had been canceled "due to weather in New York."

"I could see New York from Newark, and it was sunny and bright, so I don’t know exactly what happened," he said, to laughter from the audience.

Snacks and drinks at the $50-a-head fundraiser disappeared long before Obama arrived. As people milled about restlessly, even the background music — high-adrenaline selections by Bon Jovi, Neil Young and U2 — started to repeat. Still, as 7 o’clock came and went, Whitehouse campaign manager Mindy Myers wasn’t annoyed or even impatient. "It’s great of Barack" to come despite the canceled flight, Myers said. "Any other senator would have just blown it off."

By the time Obama took the stage in front of a gigantic American flag, the crowd had thinned considerably. Those who remained responded with thunderous cheers to Obama’s rhetoric. For instance: "I’ve had enough of the oil companies writing the energy bills and the drug companies writing the drug bills. ... Most of all, I’ve had enough of folks trying to make political hay out of terrorism. I’m tired of the war on terrorism being conducted primarily from September to November on every even-numbered year."

Obama never mentioned U.S. Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee, Whitehouse’s Republican opponent, by name. He cast Whitehouse’s race as one against Republicans en masse, and Republican control of the Senate.

"If we can’t lift a guy like this up, then we don’t deserve to be in the majority, and we won’t be in the majority," Obama said.

Democrats are pinning their hopes on gaining control of the Senate by picking up six seats, or even gaining leverage by winning a lesser number. Chafee’s seat is considered one of their best chances.

Just in the past week, Obama said he’d visited New York, Miami, Minneapolis, Cleveland and Columbus in Ohio, Missouri, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. He is often mentioned among presidential hopefuls in 2008, but he insists he’s not running for the presidency, and repeated the disavowal in an interview with The Providence Journal earlier this week. But as a rising star in the Democratic Party, Obama, who at 45 is the only black U.S. senator, is an immensely popular speaker, and one people will pay to hear. He had previously hosted a fundraiser for Whitehouse in Chicago; that event raked in more than $50,000, and yesterday was even more lucrative.

"Well over a thousand" people bought tickets to the standing-room-only event at RIC, according to Whitehouse campaign spokeswoman Alex Swartsel.

Afterward, Obama was whisked away to a pricier fundraiser at the East Side home of Jack and Sara McConnell. Swartsel said the campaign sold 150 tickets at $1,000 each.

Obama is one in a string of political all-stars stopping in Rhode Island this campaign season. U.S. Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., spoke at Providence College yesterday; U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., visited last week on Chafee’s behalf. Another Republican presidential contender, former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, is scheduled to appear at a fundraiser for Governor Carcieri today. President Clinton will headline a fundraiser for the state Democratic Party on Monday; his wife, U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, visits Oct. 27.