Martin Luther King almost didn’t live long enough to be murdered by a white man in Memphis, Tennessee in 1968—because a black woman tried to kill him in 1958. She damn near succeeded.
King’s policy of nonviolence was crucial to the campaign for civil rights, so it probably would have taken years more to get the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965 through a balky Congress if someone else had been the face of Black America at the time.
On September 20, 1958, King was signing copies of his book on the bus boycott in Alabama, “Stride Toward Freedom,” in Blumstein’s Department Store on 125th Street. More than a hundred people were waiting in line holding copies of the book and dozens more of his admirers were present. A woman named Izola Curry walked past a the people waiting in line to meet King and asked a helper if this was Doctor King. When the assistant answered yes, she plunged a sharp blade into King’s chest. Pandemonium ensued. Curry yelled, “You made enough people suffer in the last six years! I have to do it!” Women screamed. Men surrounded Curry, but King still had enough breath to say, “That’s all right! That’s all right! Everything’s going to be all right.”
A bystander started to pull the blade out. Luckily, someone stopped him. King might have died before he got help if that had happened. The front-page photo of King was taken by a freelance photographer who’d been hired to take photos of the book signing by King’s publisher. In it, King appeared calm and not badly hurt. In reality, the attack nearly killed him. King was rushed to Harlem Hospital, where doctors spent four hours operating to save his life. After the surgery a physician at the hospital estimated King would need three months to fully recover. Two days later he was still on the critical list. At the time he was just 29 years old. By Tuesday, September 23, he was able to walk thirty feet to be X-rayed. After that exertion he had to be wheeled back to his bed.
New York Governor Averell Harriman issued a statement after the attack saying it was apparently “the work of a deranged woman,” which was a polite way of saying “crazy as hell.” Izola Curry was taken before a judge to be charged with attempted murder (police had plenty of witnesses). When the judge asked why she had stabbed King with a knife, she yelled, “No, it was a letter opener.” When asked why she wanted to kill King, she asked, “Who said I wanted to kill him?” After more questioning, she finally claimed she attacked King because he was “mixed up with the Communists.” She was taken to Bellevue Hospital for psychiatric observation and later committed to Matteawan State Hospital in New York. King was released from the hospital on October 3, but spent a month at his Alabama home recuperating.
Was Izola Curry crazy? Well, what sane person would want to kill someone she’d never met? It could be argued that James Earl Ray, the man who shot King 10 years later, was also crazy—it’s just that his particular insanity was limited to hating people because of their skin color.
After her arrest police searched Curry and found she was also carrying a loaded pistol. If she had pulled and fired the gun instead of using the letter opener, King might have died within seconds, and today would just be another day in January.