Woman who stabbed and nearly killed MLK in 1958 dies at 98
theGRIO REPORT - Izola Ware Curry, the black woman who nearly killed Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the late 1950s by stabbing him with a steel letter opener, died on Saturday. She was 98...
Izola Ware Curry, the black woman who nearly killed Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the late 1950s by stabbing him with a steel letter opener, died on Saturday. She was 98.
Curry, who would have turned 99 in June, has lived in a series of homes after her release from the Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, reports The Smoking Gun.
In 1958, Curry had moved from Georgia to New York after her six-month marriage had fallen apart. She was suffering from delusions, paranoia and illogical thinking. One psychiatric report stated that she “believes she has been under constant surveillance and all her movements are known to the NAACP and Dr. King.”
As Dr. King was signing copies of his first book, Curry, who believed that he was conspiring with the NAACP to keep her under surveillance and to prevent her from getting a job, approached him with a loaded gun in her bra. Instead, she pulled out the letter opener and plunged it into his upper chest.
Asked later about her motivations, Curry said, “Because after all if it wasn’t him it would have been me, he was going to kill me.”
Dr. King issued a statement from the hospital as he was recovering: “I feel no ill will toward Mrs. Izola Curry and know that thoughtful people will do all in their power to see that she gets the help she apparently needs if she is to become a free and constructive member of society.”
Years later, in his “Promised Land” speech, King referenced the stabbing.
You know, several years ago, I was in New York City autographing the first book that I had written. And while sitting there autographing books, a demented black woman came up. Before I knew it, I had been stabbed by this demented woman. I was rushed to Harlem Hospital. It was a dark Saturday afternoon. That blade had gone through, and the X-rays revealed that the tip of the blade was on the edge of my aorta, the main artery. And once that’s punctured, you drowned in your own blood, that’s the end of you. It came out in The New York Times the next morning that if I had merely sneezed, I would have died.
Reflecting on how much he had seen and been a part of in the Civil Rights movement, he noted that he was glad he was still around to see history unfold before his eyes. “I’m so happy that I didn’t sneeze.”
