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

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Description

Pearson suggests that an incident in 1958 of a deranged black woman stabbing King in Harlem represented a mortal danger to the very soul of a nation attempting to put racism behind it. He recreates America at the dawn of the civil rights movement, and in doing so probes and examines the living body politic of the nation, both black and white, and shows us how change really occurs: not in one grand gesture, but in a thousand small and contradictory ways. As truths and apocrypha clash in these pages, what emerges is a powerful picture of change in race perspective in America.

Reviews

"This fact-filled foray into a harrowing day in King's life, and the political environment of Harlems and of the [civil rights] movement makes for interesting reading."

Author Bio

Descended from generations of African-American surgeonsincluding his great-uncle, who was the first Negro surgeon in south Georgia and who built the largest private hospital for blacks in the stateHUGH PEARSONs distinctive voice weaves autobiography and investigative journalism to offer a unique window of understanding into the nature of the American experience. He was the author of Under the Knife: How a Wealthy Negro Surgeon Wielded Power in the Jim Crow South (2000), which The New York Times called "a moving passionate story," of "a poignancy transcending issues of race." His previous book was The Shadow of the Panther: Huey Newton and the Price of Black Power in America, a New York Times Notable Book of 1994. Pearson was also a former columnist for the Village Voice. He died in 2005.