When Harlem Nearly Killed King

About this book

When Harlem Nearly Killed King spins the tale of a little-known episode in the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. how in 1958 King was stabbed by a deranged black woman in Harlem and then saved by Harlem Hospitals most acclaimed African-American surgeon using a little known and difficult procedure. Pearson recreates America at the dawn of the civil rights movement and in so doing probes and examines the living body politic of the nation black and white and shows us how change really occurs: painfully not in one grand gesture but in a thousand small and contradictory ways. As the story of When Harlem Nearly Killed King unfolds it offers up surprising truths: how Harlems leading black bookseller was snubbed by King and his entourage in favor of a Jewish-owned department store; and how the acclaimed surgeon seems not to have been the doctor responsible for the surgery. As truths and apocrypha clash in these pages what emerges is a powerful picture of change in race perspectives in America and how such change really occurs reminding us today that race in America is still unfinished business.