Synopses & Reviews
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 Hospital's 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 Harlem s 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.
Synopsis
"Deftly recreates the political reformism, high-maintenance egos, and petulant jealousies that . . . remain prevalent in this nation’s sociopolitical psyche."—Boston Globe
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 Hospital’s most acclaimed African-American surgeon. In Pearson’s hands, the life-threatening episode becomes, in a sense, a mortal danger to the soul of a nation struggling against wave after wave of crisis.
Hugh Pearson is a former editorial page writer at The Wall Street Journal.
Synopsis
In 1958, Dr. Martin Luther King was stabbed by a deranged black woman in Harlem, and then saved at Harlem Hospital, where the head of surgery was an acclaimed African-American. As Pearson captures the historical moment, here in the Northern cities many of the ideas of racial equality were still just that--ideas, symbols, not yet facts of life. In Pearson's hands, the 1958 life-threatening episode becomes, in a sense, a mortal danger to the very soul of a nation attempting to put racism behind it. 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, showing us how change really occurs: painfully, not in one grand gesture, but in a thousand small and contradictory ways.
Synopsis
A former editorial page writer at the Wall Street Journal recaptures the violent instant in which the civil rights movement was nearly derailed.
Synopsis
Descended from generations of African-American surgeons—including his great-uncle, who was the first Negro surgeon in south Georgia and who built the largest private hospital for blacks in the state—HUGH PEARSON’s 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.
About the Author
HUGH PEARSON, a former editorial page writer at The Wall Street Journal, is the author, most recently, of Under the Knife: How a Wealthy Negro Surgeon Wielded Power in the Jim Crow South (S&S, 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 is also a former columnist for the Village Voice. He serves on the board of directors of the New York Civil Liberties Union.