Research Catalog

Title

When Harlem nearly killed King : the 1958 stabbing of Martin Luther King, Jr. / Hugh Pearson.

Author

Pearson, Hugh.

Publication

New York : Seven Stories Press, 2002.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

v, 138 p.; 22 cm.

Summary

"When Harlem Nearly Killed King tells the tale of a little-known episode in the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. - how, in 1958, King was stabbed by an emotionally disturbed woman in Harlem, and then saved by a team of Harlem Hospital's surgeons. The incident occurs in the wake of the 1956 Supreme Court decision to desegregate buses in Montgomery, Alabama, after the year-long boycott - a triumph for King. Pearson unearths the political power play between N.Y. gubernatorial candidates W. Averell Harriman and Nelson Rockefeller vying for the Black vote, between King's surgeons jousting for credit, and among Harlem's leading figures of the day seeking to roll out a red carpet for King." "As Pearson captures the historical moment, in the Northern cities many of the ideas of racial equality were still just that - ideas, symbols, not yet facts of life. In Pearson's hands, the 1958 life-threatening episode becomes, in a sense, a mortal danger to the very soul of a nation attempting to put racism behind it. With his unique understanding of the nature of the American experience, Pearson recreates America at the dawn of the civil rights movement and shows us how change really occurs: painfully, not in one grand gesture, but in a thousand small and contradictory ways. There emerges a powerful portrait of change in race perspectives in America, one that suggests there is still work to be done."--Jacket.

Subject

• Attempted murder > New York > History > 20th century
• Harlem (New York, N.Y.) > History > 20th century
• Harlem (New York, N.Y.) > Race relations
• Harlem Hospital (New York, N.Y.) > History
• Harlem Hospital Center > History
• King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968 > Assassination attempt, 1958
• New York (N.Y.) > History > 1951-
• New York (N.Y.) > Race relations
• Stab wounds > History > New York > 20th century

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 133-138).

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Where do we go from here? -- A tight race -- Putting the right spin on a huge embarrassment -- Taking the kid-glove approach -- Why isn't King signing books at my bookstore? -- Not quite in touch with reality -- Stride toward critical acclaim -- Crisis -- Why did they take King to Harlem Hospital? -- Waiting for Little Napoleon -- Roots -- Saving King -- Convalescence -- Subsequent fates.

ISBN

158322274X :

LCCN

^^2001007352

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library