Gov. David Paterson this morning challenged America to reject its discriminatory history toward African-Americans and elect Barack Obama as the country’s first black president.

Paterson, New York’s first black governor and former supporter of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton for president, told the national NAACP conference in Cincinnati that looking past race in the presidential election will be a test for U.S. voters.

“Can America reject the crucible of race that has dictated and pervaded all of our history to embrace an African American man who has the right policies for the next decade in our country?” Paterson asked the crowd, to several applause, during his 36-minute keynote address.

In his first major speech on the national stage since taking office in mid-March, Paterson was forceful and threw in several of his patented one-liners. Yet he spoke with strong emotion about the struggles African Americans faced during slavery and since then with discrimination in the workforce and in the communities in which they live.

He also criticized the media in his home state, saying he has been called the “accidental governor” by the New York press when no other governor or president who took office from a resigning leader has been stamped with such a title. He replaced former Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who resigned amid links to a prostitution scandal.

Paterson, 54, stopped short of outwardly blaming it on being the state’s first African-American governor, but said with a smirk, “Why was this non-illustrious title held all these years for me? I will leave the answer to all of you… because I haven’t had a chance to think about it.”

Paterson announced that today he will sign an executive order to bolster laws that encourage more minority-owned businesses in New York and will name Paul T. Williams, Jr., an attorney and African-American civil leader, as head of the state’s Dormitory Authority, which oversees more than $6 billion in public-construction projects.

As he has done regularly at the state Capitol, Paterson warned of the national economic crisis, predicting that gas prices will hit $5 a gallon by Labor Day.

But Paterson, of Harlem who started his professional career in 1981 working as an aide for the NAACP in Manhattan, expressed optimism in America’s resolve.

“We can work together—whether we be Asian, black, Hispanic or white,” he said, “whether we be upper-middle class or welfare recipients, whether we be home owners, tenants, landlords or even homeless to bring this country back, to build America and bring back prosperity and reignite the engine of our economy.

“And when we do, it will be proudest moment in our history.”