Izola Ware Curry, the New York City woman whom Martin Luther King, Jr. described as “demented” after she stabbed him in the chest at a book signing in 1958, died Saturday at a Queens nursing home, The Smoking Gun reported.
Upon her 1972 release from Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, Curry spent years in a series of group homes in Queens. She resided at the Hillside Manor nursing home in Jamaica until her death, which was confirmed by the New York City medical examiner’s office, TSG reported.
According to court, police and psychiatric records, Curry suffered from delusions and paranoia in the years leading up to her assassination attempt on King, TSG reported. An October 1958 psychiatric report said Curry “believes she has been under constant surveillance and all her movements are known to the NAACP and Dr. King,” TSG reported.
On September 20, 1958, Curry approached King at a Harlem department store and plunged a seven-inch letter opener deep into his chest.
The 29-year-old reverend later said in a statement that he felt “no ill will toward Mrs. Izola Curry” and hoped that she could get the help she needed.
TSG notes that in the decade between King’s stabbing and his assassination, the civil rights leader would often speak about Curry’s attack and how close he came to death.
During his “Promised Land” speech, delivered the day before he died, King said:
“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. The only question I heard from her was, ’Are you Martin Luther King?’ And I was looking down writing, and I said, ’Yes.’ And the next minute I felt something beating on my chest. 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.”
• Jessica Chasmar can be reached at jchasmar@washingtontimes.com.
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