All posts by Woodstock Whisperer

Attended the Woodstock Music and Art Fair in 1969, became an educator for 35 years after graduation from college, and am retired now and often volunteer at Bethel Woods Center for the Arts which is on the site of that 1969 festival.
Black history, Today in history

Izola Curry Stabs MLK

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Izola Curry Stabs MLK

20 September 1958

Izola Curry Stabs MLK

Martin Luther King, Jr

Boomers remember the day that James Earl Ray assassinated Martin Luther King, Jr. 1968 had begun with the disillusioning Tet Offensive and June 5 brought Sirhan Sirhan’s assassination of Robert Kennedy on the night RFK had mostly wrapped up the Democratic Party’s nomination for president.

When Ray assassinated King, it didn’t bring surprise or shock so much as worry and wonder. When would the violence end?

Izola Curry Stabs MLK

1958 book signing

Martin Luther King, Jr (29 years old) was in New York City signing copies of his recently published book, Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story in Blumstein’s department store. Izola Ware Curry was on line with others who were waiting for King to sign a copy of the book.

Izola Ware Curry was a woman with mental illness. The illness prevented her from holding a job. She moved regularly in hopes of finding a permanent job and living in a permanent location.

Izola Curry Stabs MLK

Officer Howard

When she came up to King she asked him if he was Martin Luther King, Jr. When King replied yes, she said, “I’ve been looking for you for five years,” then stabbed him in the chest with a steel letter opener.

NYPD officers Al Howard (31 and on the force for 3 years) and Phil Romano (a rookie) responded.  Someone wanted to pull out the opener, but very luckily for King, Howard told her not to and told King, “Don’t sneeze, don’t even speak.”

Cops didn’t carry radios at the time and so Howard had to use a phone.  There was also a crowd issue. Howard devised a plan. He announced that people must clear a path to the front door and began to move in that direction, but Officer Romano and other carried King out the back door to an ambulance.

At the Harlem Hospital, chief of thoracic and vascular surgery John W. V. Cordice, Jr., and trauma surgeon Emil Naclerio [who had been attending a wedding and arrived still in a tuxedo] were the first to treat King. They  inserted a rib spreader, making King’s aorta visible.

Izola Curry Stabs MLK

Aubre de Lambert Maynard

Chief of Surgery Aubre de Lambert Maynard then entered and attempted to pull out the letter opener, but cut his glove on the blade; a surgical clamp was finally used to remove it.

While it may seem that a letter opener is not necessarily a very dangerous weapon, had Curry’s thrust gone any deeper it would have hit King’s aorta and likely killed him.

Izola Curry Stabs MLK

Aftermath

When King later spoke of the incident, he sometimes told about how many letter of encouragement he’d received. Even from President Eisenhower and Vice President Richard Nixon. But he typically spoke about a letter that a high school student from White Plains, NY sent: 

Dear Dr. King,

I am a ninth-grade student at the White Plains High School. While it should not matter, I would like to mention that I’m a white girl. I read in the paper of your misfortune, and of your suffering. And I read that if you had sneezed, you would have died. And I’m simply writing you to say that I’m so happy that you didn’t sneeze.

With gallows humor, King always closed the telling by saying, “And I’m glad I didn’t sneeze, too.” He  referred to the letter the day before Ray assassinated him.

Izola Curry Stabs MLK

Indictment

A grand jury indicted Isola Curry, but psychiatrists found her too ill to be responsible for her actions. She first went to Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, near Poughkeepsie, N.Y. She remained there for some 14 years. She was later institutionalized for about a year at the Manhattan Psychiatric Center on Wards Island, in the East River. She lived in a series of residential-care homes before entering a nursing home in Queens, NY.

She died there on March 7, 2015 with no known relatives. (NYT obit)

Izola Curry Stabs MLK

Showman’s

When Howard retired, he and his partner Mona Lopez took over the Showman’s jazz club, now located  at 375 West 125th Street in Harlem. They ran it for nearly 39 years until COVID shut down so much.

In September 2020, Howard and Lopez flew to Las Vegas, a regular trip for them, but on the way home Howard fell sick. It was COVID and he died on October 21 . His funeral was held October 27 at J. Foster Phillips Funeral Home in Jamaica Queens. He was buried at The Evergreens Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.

Izola Curry Stabs MLK

PDF NYT article: MLK stabbed

Link to expanded story about Officer Howard.

Amsterdam News obituary for Howard

Izola Curry Stabs MLK
Birthdays, Woodstock Music and Art Fair

Remembering Brother Gene Dinwiddie

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Remembering Brother Gene Dinwiddie

“Take This Winter Out of My Mind” by Full Moon (1972)

Remembering Brother Gene Dinwiddie

September 19, 1936 –  January 11, 2002

I was one of those white suburban kids growing up in a very white suburban neighborhood that I didn’t realize was whites-only because no real estate agencies and owners would rent or sell to non-whites. Segregation northern style. Quiet but omnipresent.

We white suburban kids did not realize we were listening to our own American blues when we heard Eric Burdon sing “House of the Rising Sun” or Mick Jagger sing “You Better Move On.”

British bands like the Animals and Rolling Stones reinterpreted American blues, but bands like the Paul Butterfield Blues Band were revitalizing or simply continuing the blues tradition.

Remembering Brother Gene Dinwiddie

Gene Dinwiddie

Gene Dinwiddie, or Brother Gene Dinwiddie as he was often known, was part of that tradition.

He had already been playing in bands for 10 years when he joined Butterfield which presented him the opportunity to record. The American music scene was typically as segregated as my home town. Whether it be exclusionary tactics by record companies, recording studios, publishers, or venues, black musicians faced barriers at each entry. I certainly cannot speak for Gene Dinwiddie or any black musician, but I could understand the inclination of joining a band led by a white musician with hopes that the white musician would have access that he did not.

Remembering Brother Gene Dinwiddie

Paul Butterfield Blues Band

He joined Paul Butterfield Blues Band in mid-1967 in time for the group’s appearance at the Monterey Pop Festival.

“Love March” became the band’s best known song because of its inclusion on the Woodstock album. It was Dinwiddie and drummer Phillip Wilson who lead on that song.

The longer Dinwiddie was in the band, the more he influenced its sound. The band ended in 1971, but a few of its members including Dinwiddie formed Full Moon.

Brother Gene Dinwiddie also played as a session musician with BB King, Melissa Manchester, Jackie Lomax, and Gregg Allman.

His most visible appearance on record in the 1990s was playing tenor sax on Etta James’ album Stickin’ to My Guns.

Remembering Brother Gene Dinwiddie
Cold War, Today in history

Khrushchev Disneyland Nyet

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Khrushchev Disneyland Nyet

September 19, 1959

Khrushchev Disneyland Nyet

Nikita Khrushchev

Nikita Khrushchev had come to power in the Soviet Union following the death of Josef Stalin. He among others, but eventually he was the leader. It was a time of animosity between the West, represented and led by the United States and the Soviet bloc, represented by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

In 1959, the U.S. and Soviet governments surprised the world by announcing that Khrushchev would visit America in September and meet with Eisenhower face to face.

He arrived on September 15 for two weeks and in addition to many planned diplomatic exchanges, Premier Khrushchev wanted to visit Disneyland.

September 19, 1959

Khrushchev arrived in Los Angeles around noon that day. He had flown from New York and expressed his disappointment at not having the “opportunity of coming into contact with the ordinary people, the workers, who are the backbone of the life of the city, the producers of its wealth.”

Anti Communists lunch with Communist Head

20th Century Fox President Spyros Skouras hosted a luncheon for Khrushchev at the Cafe de Paris, the studio’s commissary. There was a blitz of requests to attend and many Hollywood stars attended such as Frank Sinatra, Gary Cooper, Elizabeth Taylor, and Marilyn Monroe among others. Such enthusiasm to attend an event for a Communist leader was ironic given the blacklisting of so many of Hollywood’s writers, directors, and actors earlier in the decade because of supposed or actual ties to the Communist Party. A few, such as Bing Crosby, Ward Bond, and Ronald Reagan, did turn down their invitations. [Perhaps Reagan said, “Mr Khrushchev, I am tearing up this ticket!”]

Khrushchev Disneyland Nyet

Tomato incident

During the luncheon, the Los Angeles Police Chief William Parker informed Henry Cabot Lodge, the US Ambassador to the United Nations, the he, Parker, could not guarantee the safety of Khrushchev though Parker had thought so earlier. During Khrushchev’s entourage from the airport to 20th Century Fox, someone had thrown a tomato at Khrushchev’s car. It missed, but still worried Parker.

Lodge agreed with Parker’s concerns and said that another event would replace it. Word got to Khrushchev and sent a note to Lodge: “I understand you have canceled the trip to Disneyland. I am most displeased.”

Spyros P. Skouras

     Skouras spoke. He represented the immigrant’s American dream. Arriving in the US at 17, selling newpapers, being a bus boy, with his brother investing in a movie theater and then others, by 1932 he managed a chain of 500 theaters.

      He said at the luncheon, “In all modesty, I beg you to look at me, I am an example of one of those immigrants who, with my two brothers, came to this country. Because of the American system of equal opportunities, I am now fortunate enough to be president of 20th Century Fox.”

     Khrushchev’s following remarks included how he, too, had worked his way up from manual labor to be the powerful person he was.

Khrushchev Can Can

After the luncheon, Skouras brought Khrushchev to the soundstage where Can-Can was being filmed. They stopped and greeted various celebrities, including Marilyn Monroe.

He said to her, “You’re a very lovely young lady.”

Perhaps presenting a dance scene was not the best choice for the prudish leader. After the dance, he denounced that it was a pornographic exploitation, despite his smiles while watching it.

No M-I-C-K-E-Y

That ended his Hollywood visit and there was no Disneyland for Khrushchev.  Lodge decided that taking the premier on a tour of tract housing developments instead was the alternative.

Politico article

Khrushchev Disneyland Nyet

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