THERE is, of course, no convenient moment to suffer a stroke. But for Wyatt Tee Walker, the venerable Harlem minister, the timing could not have been worse.
This is Walker’s busy season, a period where he is much in demand, although those closest to him have a hard time remembering exactly when the off-peak months start.
But they know his January calendar is full, especially around the middle of the month, with appointments wedged in tightly with little, tiny writing. An address at this symposium. A lecture at that consortium. The same speech 100,000 times now and counting. The subject, almost always the same: His friend and fellow soldier, Martin Luther King Jr.
“The true significance of Martin Luther King has gotten lost in the sentimentality,” Walker told a crowd at one of these celebrations a couple of years ago. “He emancipated the psyche of most Americans. He shaped public policy.”
Few people in America had a better view of King’s role in molding the country’s conscience than Walker, the pastor of Harlem’s Canaan Baptist Church.
When King was president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, leading unarmed troops in the nonviolent battle for equal rights, Walker was the group’s executive director, King’s right-hand man and chief strategist.
In fact, when King wrote his famous “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” chastising status-quo ministers who urged him to slow down, it was Walker who sneaked a camera past guards to snap a photo of the famous inmate.
In 1968, when Walker was installed as Canaan’s pastor, King was at the 116th Street church to preside. Walker is the only New York pastor installed by King.
Ten days later, King was dead.
“I was just in awe of them,” said Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields, an Alabama native who participated in some of the demonstrations there as a teenager.
“They inspired confidence among and within us. That was the key.”
These days, Walker focuses his attention on charter schools and economic empowerment.
He suffered two strokes Jan. 4, but aides said there was no permanent damage, and his recovery is progressing nicely.
At 73, Walker is the same age as would be the man who’s birthday is commemorated tomorrow. His step is slower than when he marched in Selma and Albany. His eyes aren’t as sharp as when they squinted through tear gas.
But his regal presence, even in sickness, is comforting assurance that the good don’t just die young.
They endure, too.