2. James Earl Ray assassinated Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968 but it was not the first assassination attempt made on his life. Izola Wale Curry, a black woman, approached King on September 20, 1958 at a book signing event in New York. Curry stabbed King in the chest with a steel letter opener. Curry, an unemployed, divorced woman, feared that the N.A.A.C.P. was a communist organization that prevented her from finding work. King became her target.
