The New York Times - USA (2020-11-15)

THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2020 MB 7

interview for the internal Police Depart-
ment magazine, Spring 3100. “The only ra-
dio we had was the one in the patrol car.
Once we left that, our communication was
cut off. We were entirely on our own, and be-
lieve me, it was some predicament.”
He went into greater detail that night in
Showman’s. “I said, ‘Take me to a tele-
phone,’ ” Mr. Howard recounted to Mr.
Miller. “I called Harlem Hospital. I said:
‘Send an ambulance. I have this man who’s
got a knife sticking out of his chest. What do
we do?’ The doctor came on the phone and
said: ‘Don’t take it out. We’ll send an ambu-
lance right away.’ ”
Officer Howard said: “There’s a big
crowd at the front of the store. Send it to the
back of the store.”
The two patrolmen hatched a fast plan,
and Officer Howard turned to the crowd.
The sight of a Black police officer in Harlem
was no longer a novelty — the traditionally
Irish-American force had some 1,200 Black
officers by 1960 — but Officer Howard none-
theless stood out.
“He had a mild face,” the New York News-
day columnist Jimmy Breslin wrote of him
in 1993, “but at the same time a face that
caused people, upon looking at it even for a
moment, to stop what they were doing and
behave.”
Officer Howard announced that Dr. King
would be taken out through the front door
on 125th Street and asked that a path be
cleared. It worked. He himself stayed out
front, as if waiting, while Officer Romano
and others carried Dr. King, still seated in
his chair, to an ambulance out back, on 124th
Street. “Rather than try to push inside, a
couple of thousand excited people remained
out on the street to watch,” Mr. Breslin
wrote.
Dr. King was taken to Harlem Hospital,
where a team of doctors worked to pull the
blade from his chest. Outside the operating
room, 40 people offered to give blood. A doc-
tor told reporters that the blade “impinged
on the aorta, a blood vessel near the heart,”
and that a puncture would have caused “in-
stant death.”
The police arrested Izola Ware Curry, a
mentally ill woman who believed Dr. King
and others were following her, and charged
her with the stabbing.
Dr. King spent weeks in New York City re-
covering. He addressed reporters from
Harlem Hospital: “First let me say that I
feel no ill will toward Mrs. Izola Curry and
know that thoughtful people will do all in
their power to see that she gets the help she
apparently needs if she is to become a free
and constructive member of society.”
He blamed larger societal ills: “A climate
of hatred and bitterness so permeates areas

of our nation that inevitably deeds of ex-

treme violence must erupt.”

He later wrote a letter to thank the police.

“I have long been aware of the meaning of

the phrase ‘New York’s finest’ when applied

to members of the N.Y. Police Department,”

he wrote. “From the moment of my unfortu-

nate accident, I have concurred, whole-

heartedly, in that appellation. There are

none finer.”

Officer Howard rose in the department,

though not because of his actions at Blum-

stein’s. The earliest commendation in his

personnel file would arrive two months lat-

er, for arresting a man with a gun. He

worked bigger cases later, helping in the

hunt for the serial killer known as Son of

Sam and with a drug squad doing extensive

heroin investigations in the Bronx.

He told Mr. Miller that years after the

stabbing, he walked into a sandwich shop in

Harlem and saw Dr. King sitting with three

other people at a table. “I was looking at

him, and he was looking at me,” he recalled,

“so I walked across the store. I asked, ‘Do

you remember me?’ He said: ‘I know I

know you. I can’t remember from where.’ ”

Dr. King’s career and stature soared over

the decade that followed that afternoon at

Blumstein’s. During a speech in Memphis in

1968, he would reflect on that day.

“You know, several years ago I was in

New York City, autographing the first book

that I had written,” he said. “And while sit-

ting there autographing books, a demented

Black woman came up. The next minute I

felt something beating on my chest. Before I

knew it I had been stabbed by this de-

mented woman.

“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’re

drowned in your own blood, that’s the end of

you.”

He added, “It came out in The New York

Times the next morning that if I had merely

sneezed, I would have died.” He repeated

the phrase over and over, “If I had sneezed,”

while naming the civil rights milestones he

had accomplished since then — the lunch-

counter sit-ins, the march on Selma, the “I

Have a Dream” speech — and then con-

cluded, “I’m so happy that I didn’t sneeze.”

The following day, Dr. King was shot

dead.

Officer Howard reacted to the assassina-

tion with the same shock and sadness as

countless others. But he held his own story

close. “He was old police,” said his son, Al

Howard Jr., 72. “They did their work and

they came home and they were father, hus-

band.”

After Officer Howard retired, he took

over Showman’s. “If you wanted to hear the

best jazz in the world, you could come to

Showman’s and not pay a cover,” his son

said.

The club drew many from the neighbor-

hood, said the Rev. Robert Royal, a Baptist

minister and himself a regular. “ ‘Bob Royal,

you’re a preacher,’ ” he recalled Mr. Howard

telling him once in the club. “ ‘How come I

see you sitting on a bar stool night after

night?’ I said, ‘Well, Al, I’m undercover for

Jesus.’ ”

The coronavirus shut down Showman’s

in March. Mr. Howard stayed home and

kept busy, but finally had enough of lock-

down. He and Mona Lopez, his companion

and partner at Showman’s, were regular

visitors to Las Vegas, and they flew there in

September. On the way home the following

week, Mr. Howard fell ill with what ap-

peared to be a cold but was actually the co-

ronavirus. He died several days later of

Covid-19. He was 93.

His funeral on Oct. 27 at J. Foster Phillips

Funeral Home in Jamaica, Queens, was lim-

ited in size by social-distance restrictions,

but mourners included people from both

sides of his working life — the Police De-

partment and the club. His grandson Malik

Howard read from an obituary that listed

his many accomplishments. Tucked among

them: “He helped save Martin Luther King

Jr.’s life.”

That night at the bar in 2018, as Mr. How-

ard’s story reached its end, the place had

emptied but for the two men. Mr. Miller was

struck by what would seem to be the ulti-

mate futility of his friend’s actions in 1958.

“I mentioned it’s a shame he was killed a

few years later,” Mr. Miller said. “You can

save a guy’s life, and still, the life isn’t

saved.”

His friend disagreed.

“Al made the point that in that span of

years that he didn’t die by being stabbed,”

Mr. Miller said, “he went on to do the most

important works.”

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

Top left, the Rev. Dr.

Martin Luther King Jr.

being wheeled into Harlem

Hospital in September

1958, the letter opener

still protruding from his

chest. Above, at the

funeral of the nightclub

owner and former police

officer Al Howard last

month in Queens, his

grandson Malik Howard

being comforted by Briana

Freeland, left. At left, Dr.

King and his wife, Coretta

Scott King, leaving the

hospital in October 1958.

Far left, the police

arresting his attacker, Izola

Ware Curry, center. Dr.

King said he bore no ill

will toward her.

An Officer in Harlem, Saving Dr. King’s Life

PHIL GREITZER/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS ARCHIVE, VIA GETTY IMAGES

PHIL GREITZER/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS ARCHIVE, VIA GETTY IMAGES

PAT CANDIDO/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS, VIA GETTY IMAGES

VICTOR J. BLUE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

‘Send an ambulance. I

have this man who’s got

a knife sticking out of his

chest. What do we do?’

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