1958: Martin Luther King Jr. is stabbed
Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was stabbed today at a Harlem department store as he autographed copies of his published book about the integration battle in Montgomery, Alabama. According to newspaper accounts from 1958, it was the third attempt on King's life.
"'You made enough people suffer in the last six years,' shouted 42-year-old Izola Ware Curry, as she drew a five-inch letter opener from the front of her dress and plunged it into King's chest," an article in The Lima News reported on September 21, 1958.
King was rushed to a hospital in Harlem with the weapon still in his chest. Police apprehended Curry as she tried to enter a taxi outside the department store. "Detectives said she apparently was a mental case, and had a loaded pistol concealed in the front of her dress," an article in The Post Standard mentioned on September 21, 1958. For more information about Martin Luther King Jr., visit the Martin Luther King Jr. Archive.
Imagine if he had died then...how different things might be in this country because he didnt get to tell us his "dream". Loves.