Actual Factual Georgia

Q: Martin Luther King Jr. was stabbed by a woman in 1958. Why did she stab him? What happened to her? Is she still alive?

—David Hackney, Gainesville

A: MLK Jr.'s dream almost ended five years before his famous speech. He was signing copies of his book — "Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story" — in Blumstein's Department Store in Harlem on Sept. 20, 1958, when Izola Curry, a fellow Georgian who was born in Adrian, just east of Dublin, pushed a letter opener into his chest. It grazed King's heart, but two New York City policemen held him as stable as possible while carrying King from the store to prevent the letter opener from moving. "If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been able to tell America about a dream that I had had," King later said during a speech. King went to surgery and Curry, who also was black, was arrested. Police found a loaded pistol in her purse, and it's not known why she attacked King with the letter opener instead of shooting him. Newspapers were quick to call her deranged and she continued to insist that the Civil Rights movement was associated with Communism. When Curry was charged, she stated: "I'm charging (King) as well as he's charging me. … I'm charging him with being mixed up with the Communists." She was sent to a hospital for observation, according to the police report, and later was found not fit to stand trial. A month after the stabbing, Curry was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and committed to Matteawan State Hospital. Little is known about her from that point. If Curry is still alive, she'd be about 98. Filmmakers Al Cohen and Wayne Davis, who are producing a documentary called "When Harlem Saved a King" (whsak.com), have alleged that Curry was involved in an assassination plot. "I think people will find an ironic twist about (the story). Many said she was deranged woman, but it could possibly be something bigger than that, a bigger conspiracy," Cohen told MSNBC's TheGrio.com. "It's not just a crazy woman who got in an argument against (King) and just wanted to defend herself. It was more calculated than that."