This month is Black History Month and Royal Gazette Lifestyle reporter Rene Hill spoke to Vanosdelle (Van) Swan about his memories of marching by the side of Dr. Martin Luther King.

Today, the closest that many of us can get to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr is by visiting Madame Tussauds, but that was not the case for Vanosdelle (Van) Swan who marched and met with the 20th Century icon in Philadelphia.

"I had been there a few times, because I had started to meet with a lot of people there, who were close to Martin Luther King," he said.

"They called me and told me that there was going to be another march and I decided to go back and march.

"It was such a march and so many things happened, but it gave me a feeling of, 'wait a minute, if this is the way that the world is going to be, what am I going to do?'

"I stayed for that week and then I came back home and they called and asked if I would like to come back and I said, 'yeah, I'll go back.' So I said to my brother that I am going across to Philadelphia and I am going to march and I asked him, 'how would you like to go with me?' And he said he'd like to go. I didn't think that he was going to go."

At the time Mr. Swan and his brother, the late Arnold Swan, had started Swan Brothers and were facing racism as they beat out contracts of white and overseas contenders.

The pair built a profitable company and were involved in building projects including the Fairmont Southampton hotel, the Bacardi Building and the Bank of Bermuda on Front Street.

Mr Swan had grown to meet and know many of Martin Luther King's friends in Philadelphia and often attended meetings with them. "All the meetings were held in these dungeons, you would go so far down, you didn't know if you would come back up," he explained.

"They were all held in secret, because they were afraid of getting hurt and getting killed. They picked me up in a car and I am driving around with my suit on and one man called Sandy Woods said, 'I am going to the barber shop first'.

"I was thinking barber shop? It is full of men and all the men there would get a haircut. So I listened to all of that and they asked, 'is he alright?'

"Jake Parker said, 'he is my guest, he's alright.' Jake was one of Martin Luther King's bodyguards, but he had been beaten up so bad. They used to mash those men up."

Mr. Swan added: "When I first met Jake, he had a beautiful factory and he was one of the biggest masons in Philadelphia, but they burnt up everything that he had and mashed up all of his equipment after they found that he was with Martin Luther King."

Before doing this interview, Mr. Swan said he had spoken to Mr. Parker's daughter and informed her that he would be speaking about those times.

"His daughter said, 'Uncle Van, you are one of the few left who can talk about this now, most of them are either passed on, in wheel chairs or have Alzheimer's, so Uncle Van, please tell the story'."

After the meeting in the barbershop, Sandy Woods laid out the upcoming plans. "'We are going to the sermon on Sunday and then we are going to the march and then we will end up back at the church'," Mr. Swan said of his friend.

"I said, 'okay, okay, I'll be there.' And I had never seen so many men before in my life, they were men of honour, but they had to be rough, because they couldn't afford to be beaten up anymore.

"Jake said to me, 'Van you walk between those two guys and me, we don't want you to get hurt.'

"Then Martin Luther King said to me, 'What did you say your name was? I said, 'Van'. He said, 'Van, well I want you at my side through this march and when I get through this march I want you to sit at my table, you understand.

"Martin Luther King then said, 'how old are you?' I said, 'I am two years older than you'. 'He said, 'you are?'"

They marched to the Salem Baptist Church where Mr. Swan witnessed the largest congregation he had ever seen.

"They had a dinner at the church and Dr. KIng told his bodyguards he wanted to talk to me and he said, 'He is going to be somebody and I want him to know that when you go home, be somebody, even for your own people. We will overcome, but you be somebody! You are a gentleman and a scholar and we want you to come back to us as soon as you can get a chance.'

"But I never got a chance to go back, because he got shot. I knew, I felt it, as if he was walking alongside me and I said, boy, how can you know someone and you are marching for him and here he is he got shot."

Mr. Swan met the entire King family and of them he said: "His son must have been about eight or nine and I knew his wife (Coretta Scott King), she was a beautiful lady.

"I knew them all and I met them all just by going to the church. The families and all the children, you couldn't get into the Salem Baptist Church."

After meeting with Dr. King, Mr. Swan returned to the Island and he said: "I remembered everything that he said, 'be somebody, no matter what', and 'one day you will be a great man, you hear me'.

"I never thought about it, but looking at (President Barack) Obama, I said, 'if he makes it, these dreams would have all come true'.

"And he has been fortunate enough to walk where these people walked and he has gotten the opportunity of representing his people and his world.

"The night that he got in, I said to my wife, 'if only those lot could see what they fought for, it would be something'. But he is there, but he has a big job to do and it is not going to be easy."