The first MLK assassination attempt I knew of came up in a discussion at the Albany Public Library in January 2025 about Salman Rushbie’s book Knife. As you may know, Rushdie was stabbed in 2022 at Chautauqua Institution in western New York State. It’s a place my wife and I visited two years later, with greater security measures. Rushdie dreamed of something untoward happening to him the night before.
Someone in the book talk audience recalled that Martin Luther King, Jr. had been stabbed. The person thought it took place between the time of March on Washington on August 28, 1963, and when MLK was shot, presumably by James Earl Ray, on April 4, 1968. But I was sure that was not accurate. I suggested it had to have been earlier because, after 1963, he was an internationally known entity. Sure enough, it was in 1958.
I was recounting this to someone else, adding, “It was noted at the time that if he had sneezed, he would have died.” He thought I was BSing him. Nope.
“On 20 September 1958, Izola Ware Curry, a 42-year-old mentally disturbed woman, stabbed Martin Luther King, Jr., while he signed copies of his book, Stride Toward Freedom, at Blumstein’s Department Store in Harlem, New York. Curry approached King with a seven-inch steel letter opener and drove the blade into the upper left side of his chest. King was rushed to Harlem Hospital, where he underwent more than two hours of surgery to repair the wound. Doctors operating on the 29-year-old civil rights leader said: “Had Dr. King sneezed or coughed, the weapon would have penetrated the aorta.… He was just a sneeze away from death” (Papers 4:499n).”
Moreover
Not only did I recall this, but I wrote about it in 2013. The day before he died in 1968, MLK gave the Mountaintop speech. I had forgotten that he mentioned the 1958 assassination attempt as a part of that talk.
“It came out in the New York Times the next morning that if I had merely sneezed, I would have died. Well, about four days later, they allowed me, after the operation, they allowed me to read some of the mail that came in, and I’ll never forget it. It said simply, Dear Dr. King, I am a ninth-grade student at the White Plains High School. She said, while it should not matter, I would like to mention that I am a white girl. I read in the paper of your misfortune and of your suffering. And I read that if you had sneezed, you would have died. And I’m simply writing you to say that I’m so happy that you didn’t sneeze.”
In 1970, I was with a school group that drove past the Lorraine Hotel, where MLK was killed two years earlier. “In 1991, the Lorraine Motel was converted into the National Civil Rights Museum.”
One of the extremely few things I agree about 47’s actions: He signed an executive order to release more JFK, RFK, and MLK assassination files.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar said
In his Substack for this week, Kareem quotes MLK: “Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable… Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle- the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.”
He notes: “Man, Dr. King could be a real downer. I mean, he’s not wrong, but that quote challenges people to rise above obsessing over their daily lives of pursuing personal goals in careers and relationships to take on the additional burden of seeking justice. Who’s got the time for sacrifice? I’m okay with people who choose not to sacrifice; it’s people who brag about sacrifices that aren’t really sacrifices who bug me. It diminishes those who really do sacrifice for the greater good.”
He complains that athletes and reality show contestants misuse the word sacrifice, even his former self: He had said, “’I think that the good and the great are only separated by the willingness to sacrifice.’ I would modify that today to say, ‘The good and the great are only separated by the intensity of their dedication…’
“True sacrifice is when one chooses to give up something precious in order to do something that doesn’t directly benefit them but does directly benefit others. Sacrifice for the greater good has many levels: from sacrificing one’s life—like Dr. King, Gandhi, Malcolm X, and Jesus—to sacrificing free time to help those in need within their community. Parents sacrifice constantly for their children because they love them. If we can learn to extend that feeling of love to a larger ‘family’ of neighbors, towns, country, and the world, then we are sacrificing in service of a just humanity. …”
As utterly