When Harlem Nearly Killed King The 1958 Stabbing of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

by Pearson, Hugh

• ISBN13: 9781583226148
• ISBN10: 1583226141
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-01-06
• Publisher: Seven Stories Press

Summary

When harlem nearly killed king tells of how, in 1958. Martin Luther King Jr. was stabbed by an emotionally disturbed black woman in Harlem and then saved at Harlem Hospital, where the head of surgery was an acclaimed African American. In Pearson's hands the life-threatening episode becomes, in a sense, a mortal danger to the very soul of a nation just beginning to struggle in earnest with the knowledge that many of the ideas of racial equality were still only that -- ideas, symbols, not facts of life. Here Pearson skillfully 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. Book jacket.

Author Biography

Hugh Pearson serves on the board of directors of the New York Civil Liberties Union

Table of Contents

Preface: Mendacity springs eternal	p. iv
Where do we go from here?	p. 1
A tight race	p. 15
Putting the right spin on a huge embarrassment	p. 25
Taking the kid glove approach	p. 31
Why isn't king signing books at my bookstore?	p. 39
Not quite in touch with reality	p. 47
Stride toward critical acclaim	p. 51
Crisis	p. 65
Why did they take king to harlem hospital?	p. 69
Waiting for little napoleon	p. 75
Roots	p. 83
Saving king	p. 105
Convalescence	p. 113
Subsequent fates	p. 119
Epilogue	p. 122
Notes	p. 133
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