King, The Icon

About this poem

I met him once, on the street, in a car, outside the office, at 733 Yonkers Avenue, in Yonkers, New York, the site of Educational Heritage Incorporated, then otherwise known as Negro Heritage Library, a publishing house, where Noel Marder was the President, and the civil rights leader, the Reverend Dr. Wyatt T. Walker, served as Vice President. It was that publishing house that proofread, edited, and published the manuscripts of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Junior; and where I worked in 1964 as a proofreader, and had the occasion to shake the hand of a Nobel Laureate and civil rights icon, receiving in the handshake a blessing and his signature, my hand, as I recall, heated by an electrical discharge emitted from that ministerial blessing. I shall always remember! more »