The Americana Hotel

In my novel The Martin Luther King Mitzvah, Adam Jacobs and Sally Fletcher, two twelve year-olds from Beachmont, New York, a fictional suburb of New York City, meet Martin Luther King for the second time, after his speech at a union conference that is being held in the Americana Hotel (which used to be on Seventh Avenue between 52nd  and 53rd Streets in New York) in May of 1967. Their friend Gladys McKinley, a blacklisted author, takes them into the city to see her old friend Martin, and when they meet the great man in the Royal Box Supper Club, which was in the Americana, he tells them that he has “seen the Promised Land.” I think it’s a great scene, and I had fun looking at old photographs of the Royal Box Supper Club as part of my research.

In 2009, I was visiting Crown Publishers in New York City (I have written numerous books for this great publisher), and I took some photographs at Broadway and 55th Street, just outside the Random House building at 1745 Broadway (Crown Publishers is now part of Random House.) As it happens, this is only three blocks away from where the old Americana Hotel stood. The Sheraton New York Times Square Hotel is at that location now.

In Photos 1 and 2, go straight across Broadway at 55th Street for one block, then go south on Seventh Avenue for two blocks and you get to 53rd Street; then you will be where Martin Luther King was on May 2, 1967 for his speech at that conference. In Photos 3 and 4, go down Broadway for two blocks, take a left and walk over a block, and you’ll be at the same location where MLK visited the old Americana.

Imagine the world in 1967, with the war in Vietnam raging on; the civil rights movement in full flower; and the country divided. Does this sound similar to today’s world? Maybe not to that degree, but social injustice is still an issue in today’s America. I think people will enjoy reading The Martin Luther King Mitzvah, and will hopefully be healed by the story contained in the novel. Perhaps it’s not too late to listen to Martin Luther King’s message, which is as relevant today as it was in 1967.

© Copyright 2018 Mathew Tekulsky