JACKSON, Miss. – Expectations are high for incoming President Barack Obama — and not just because he's the first African-American to serve in the Oval Office.

"If he was a white guy with the same biography, I think the expectations would be just as high," legendary civil-rights leader Julian Bond says. Those high expectations reach around the globe.

"They won't just be watching from Rome and Moscow," he says. "They're going to be watching in small villages around the world, in little places where they have only one TV in the whole village."

Obama should take advantage by spreading the message of America.

"He should use his 'Yes, We Can' speech and make it global," says presidential historian Douglas Brinkley, insisting that millions in various countries would welcome him. "If he seems to be hunkered down in Washington, dealing with the bureaucratic, he'll become an incredible shrinking figure."

Because of how poorly the previous administration did, Obama will "have a year where he can almost do no wrong," Brinkley says.

Veteran civil-rights leader Lawrence Guyot of Washington agreed. That's why he says Americans must do their part.

"The greatest way to celebrate the inauguration and the next eight years of Barack Obama is to reach out to somebody you don't know and make sure they get as much help as they can," Guyot says.

Hodding Carter III, assistant secretary of state under President Jimmy Carter, called this inauguration "the most extraordinary step of our nation toward the fulfillment of its own principles in my lifetime."

"It's going to require not only all the steadiness he possesses, which he possesses a vast amount of, but also all the brilliance he possesses, which he possesses a vast amount of, and also a lot of good fortune," Carter says.

Myrlie Evers-Williams, chairwoman emeritus of the NAACP, says she prays each day for the safety of Obama and his family "because I know well what can happen." On June 12, 1963, she saw her husband, NAACP leader Medgar Evers, gunned down in their driveway in Mississippi.

She recently heard someone complain about Obama's team not recognizing some veterans of the civil-rights movement for their contributions.

"This is what we worked for," she says she replied. "It's not about us; it's about him. It's about the future and about what all of us combined can do to get America to live up to its promise."