Dark History: The Assassination Attempt on Martin Luther King Jr

Ninetoes discusses the 1958 assassination attempt on Martin Luther King Jr.

Hey there, history lovers! It is your old pal, Ninetoes, coming to you from Ninetoes HQ. Today, I am looking at the 1958 Assassination Attempt on Martin Luther King Jr. I have coffee in my system and my thinking cap on, so let’s get to it!

Last night, I started reading James L. Swanson’s Chasing King’s Killer, and I came across something in the prologue that took me by surprise. Maybe I forgot about this incident, maybe I never learned it, but I am here to tell you about it. The incident in question is the 1958 attempt on his life in New York City.

This one begins with an act of courage in Montgomery, Alabama. On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a black woman, refused to give up her seat to a white passenger. She was arrested for her action, and this sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The boycott was organized by the Women’s Political Council and was later led by the Montgomery Improvement Association. The man in charge of this organization was Martin Luther King Jr. This propelled King into the national spotlight. This also gave him the inspiration to write his first book, Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story.

On September 20, 2958, this book brought Dr. King to Blumstein’s Department Store in Harlem, New York. An area was set up in the shoe department for him to sign copies of his book. After the event began, a woman, Izola Ware Curry, pushed her way to the front of the line, asked if he was Martin Luther King Jr., and then stabbed him in the chest with a letter opener. What the bystanders did not know is that Ms. Curry had a loaded pistol in her bra.

The letter opener penetrated his sternum, and the tip was a bare fraction of an inch from his aorta. A sudden jarring movement, such as a cough or deep breath, on the part of Dr. King could have killed him. Yes, the point of the letter opener was that close!

Police officers Al Howard and Philip Romano responded quickly, and they were able to stop a well-meaning bystander from pulling the letter opener out of Dr. King’s chest. Dr. King was carried on his chair to an ambulance that took him to Harlem Hospital, where surgeons worked two hours to remove the blade (they had to remove two ribs to do so).

The ironic part is that Izola Curry was a black woman. She was a sharecropper’s daughter, and she was under the impression that Dr. King and his movement had destroyed her family’s life. She was later diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and was deemed mentally unfit to stand trial. She was then committed to a psychiatric hospital to get treatment.

This episode could have led Dr. King to a more aggressive stance for the Civil Rights movement, but instead, it firmed his resolve for nonviolence to achieve social equality. He wrote that the experience deepened his faith in nonviolence as a means to redeem both America and the world.

Darren “Ninetoes” Perdue is a book and media reviewer. When he is not reading, he is watching true crime shows, cooking for his family, or working on a plan for universal domination. If you see him on his porch, say hi. He does not bite…much.

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