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Title details for When Harlem Nearly Killed King by Hugh Pearson - Available

When Harlem Nearly Killed King

The 1958 Stabbing of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

by Hugh Pearson
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When Harlem Nearly Killed King spins the tale of a little-known episode in the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. how, in 1958, King was stabbed by a deranged black woman in Harlem, and then saved by Harlem Hospital's most acclaimed African-American surgeon, using a little known and difficult procedure.
Pearson recreates America at the dawn of the civil rights movement, and in so doing probes and examines the living body politic of the nation, black and white, and shows us how change really occurs: painfully, not in one grand gesture, but in a thousand small and contradictory ways.
As the story of When Harlem Nearly Killed King unfolds, it offers up surprising truths: how Harlem’s leading black bookseller was snubbed by King and his entourage in favor of a Jewish-owned department store; and how the acclaimed surgeon seems not to have been the doctor responsible for the surgery. As truths and apocrypha clash in these pages, what emerges is a powerful picture of change in race perspectives in America, and how such change really occurs — reminding us today that race in America is still unfinished business.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    January 4, 2011

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9781609803216

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9781609803216
      • File size: 2174 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Library Journal

      March 1, 2002
      On Saturday, September 20, 1958, at a book promotion and rally in New York City's Harlem, a ranting and apparently disoriented 42-year-old black woman named Izola Curry plunged the six- to eight-inch blade of a Japanese penknife into the chest of a rising leader of the Civil Rights Movement the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Veteran journalist Pearson ably situates the stabbing amid the web of personalities vying for competitive, and particularly political, advantage at every turn inside and outside the movement. He examines the stabbing in light of New York's 1958 gubernatorial race between the eventual winner, Republican Nelson A. Rockefeller, and Democratic stalwart W. Averell Harriman. Pearson also uses the stabbing to explain the movement's tenuous fortunes as it confronted challenges like the claim that the stabbing was a Communist-inspired plot. This fact-filled foray into a harrowing day in King's life and the political environment of Harlem and of the movement makes for interesting reading. For collections on the Civil Rights Movement, King, or local history. Thomas J. Davis, Arizona State Univ., Tempe

      Copyright 2001 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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