The Massachusetts senator used his moment in the Fleet Center spotlight to tell his life story and craft an extended argument for regime change based on the Bush administration’s failure to win the peace in Iraq.

Partisan rancor was largely absent from Kerry’s 50-minute address, but reminders of black voter dissatisfaction with Bush — who received just 8 percent of African-American votes in 2000 — were never far from view.

Moments before Kerry took to the convention floor to hand-slap his way to the podium, an image of an attractive young black woman from Tallahassee, Fla., flashed on the giant screen, longer than a city bus, over the red-white-and-blue podium.

“I was wrongfully refused the right to vote in 2000. It won’t happen again,” read the message from R. Jai Howard, one of thousands of African-Americans who were turned away at polling places during the controversial Florida balloting.

As the three-term senator stepped up on stage, members of his Swift Boat crew from Vietnam stood at ease in a row behind the lectern. Kerry went down the line, shaking hands and hugging each one, including David Alston, a black navy veteran who was one of the senator’s most ardent campaigners in his home state of South Carolina.

In a video aired before Kerry’s speech — with Morgan Freeman providing the sonorous narration — Alston had testified to his faith in Kerry as his commander: “Going into battle, having this man in charge who was willing to take a bullet, made you respect him.”

Kerry’s military service — the dominant theme of his biographical debut on the national political stage — provided the backdrop for the senator’s appeal to a faith-based vision of America unified by values that transcend party lines.

“What if we have a leadership that’s as good as the American dream — so that bigotry and hatred never again steal the hope or future of any American?” asked Kerry.

“I learned a lot about these values on that gunboat patrolling the Mekong Delta with young Americans who came from places as different as Iowa and Oregon, Arkansas, Florida, and California,” said Kerry.

“No one cared about our race or our backgrounds. We were literally all in the same boat. We looked out, one for the other — and we still do.”

Veterans of presidential campaigns past marveled at Kerry’s success throughout the week-long convention extravaganza to stick to broad appeals and side-step the slice-and-dice approach to party constituencies that have sometimes proved divisive.

“I am amazed at the whole nature of this campaign compared to 1988,” said Joseph D. Warren, a long-time Northeastern University administrator who served in the upper echelons of Gov. Michael Dukakis’ failed bid for the White House.

“Black voters made significant demands on the campaign that year for commitments to health care and housing and other bedrock programs needed to advance the social agenda, but this time we’re seeing a more sophisticated approach. There is a much more entrepreneurial-minded set of leadership coming to the fore in this campaign that cares about the bedrock issues but takes a different approach to achieving them.”

Warren, whose 33-year-old son Setti serves as Kerry’s trip director, in charge of managing all the details of the senator’s travel, said black voters, like all Democrats, are more concerned about ousting Bush than receiving iron-clad commitments on the broad range of economic and social issues.

It was left to other convention speakers, like former President Bill Clinton, to get into more specifics, like the Bush administration inverting the agenda of putting cops on the streets and getting guns off them by cutting federal funds for hiring police officers and opposing the renewal of the assault weapons ban.

Sharpton, the Brooklyn preacher whose showcase rhetoric enlivened the Democratic primary debates, addressed the issue of whether the Democratic Party was taking black voters for granted by not providing a more detailed agenda for urban America.

“Mr. President, I heard you say Friday that you had questions for voters, particularly African-American voters. And you asked the question: Did the Democratic Party take us for granted?” said Sharpton as the podium light flashed, signaling the end of his allotted seven minutes.

But Sharpton went on.

“You said the Republican Party was the party of Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. It is true that Mr. Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, after which there was a commitment to give 40 acres and a mule.

“That’s where the argument, to this day, of reparations starts. We never got the 40 acres. We went all the way to Herbert Hoover, and we never got the 40 acres. We didn’t get the mule. So we decided to ride this donkey as far as it would take us.”

Over 18,000 voices in the hall roared their approval.

Sharpton’s turn in the klieg lights came the night after Barack Obama electrified the hall with a stirring appeal to the heroes of the civil rights movement.

After Kerry concluded his own address, Obama stepped up on stage behind the senator, who draped his long right arm around Obama’s shoulder for the benefit of 20 million prime-time viewers.

Next to Kerry was his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, who, born in Mozambique, had expressed her own hopes for becoming America’s first African first lady.

U.S. Rep. Harold E. Ford, Jr., a co-chair of the Kerry campaign, predicted a tough battle for the White House coming out of the convention, but expressed confidence that the party’s efforts to win a large black voter turnout in key swing states like Missouri, Arkansas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania would make George Bush a one-term president.

“The campaign made a $2 million media buy before the convention with black radio and BET,” said Ford. “That’s never been done. We understand the importance of the black vote but let’s be clear — our message to black voters is the same as to all of America. We can do better to make our country stronger at home and more respected abroad.”