The stabbing of MLK
When the young civil rights hero's life teetered on the edge
Alex Q. Arbuckle
Sept. 20, 1958
Note: The images and descriptions in this article may be considered disturbing to some readers.On Sept. 20, 1958, 29-year-old Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was in Blumstein’s Department Store in Harlem, signing copies of Stride Toward Freedom, his account of the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott which he spearheaded. Izola Curry, a well-dressed 42-year-old woman, approached the reverend and asked if it was really him. When he replied yes, she said, “I’ve been looking for you for five years,” and plunged a letter opener into his chest.When police arrived on the scene, they found the civil rights leader sitting in a chair with the letter opener’s ivory handle still protruding just below his collar. Fearful of the blade’s proximity to King’s heart, Officer Al Howard warned him, “Don’t sneeze, don’t even speak.”While his assailant was taken into custody, King was carefully rushed to Harlem Hospital, where chief of thoracic and vascular surgery John W.V. Cordice, Jr. and trauma surgeon Emil Naclero were quickly summoned. Coming from a wedding, Naclero arrived still wearing a tuxedo, and prepared for surgery.
In a painstaking operation, surgeons opened King’s chest, exposing his aorta, and removed the letter opener with a surgical clamp.His would-be assassin was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and spent the rest of her life in mental institutions. King was quick to forgive her, saying in a press release on September 30 that he felt "no ill will" towards her and hoped that she would get the help she needed "to become a free and constructive member of society."King’s surgeon told him that the police officer’s warning had been right: The edge of the blade had been resting on his aorta, and a sneeze would have caused a fatal puncture. King recalled this detail 10 years later, in his “I've Seen the Mountaintop” speech of April 3, 1968.
I want to say tonight that I too am happy that I didn't sneeze. Because if I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been around here in 1960, when students all over the South started sitting-in at lunch counters. - Martin Luther King, Jr., "I've Been to the Mountaintop," April 3, 1968
If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been around here in 1961, when we decided to take a ride for freedom and ended segregation in interstate travel. - Martin Luther King, "I've Been to the Mountaintop," April 3, 1968
If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been around here in 1962, when Negroes in Albany, Georgia, decided to straighten their backs up. And whenever men and women straighten their backs up, they are going somewhere, because a man can't ride your back unless it is bent. - Martin Luther King, "I've Been to the Mountaintop," April 3, 1968
If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have had a chance later that year, in August, to try to tell America about a dream that I had had. - Martin Luther King, "I've Been to the Mountaintop," April 3, 1968
If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been down in Selma, Alabama, to see the great Movement there. If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been in Memphis to see a community rally around those brothers and sisters who are suffering. - Martin Luther King, "I've Been to the Mountaintop," April 3, 1968
I'm so happy that I didn't sneeze. - Martin Luther King, "I've Been to the Mountaintop," April 3, 1968
The day after delivering his speech, King was shot dead by assassin James Earl Ray in Memphis.