King had dark themes and death on his mind during the speech.
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According to reports, King’s unprepared remarks on the night of April 3 were uncharacteristically dark.
He reportedly told the crowd that they had a choice between nonviolence and “nonexistence” and reflected on a time “a woman walked up to him in a department store and stabbed him in the chest, narrowly missing his heart,” Memphis magazine reported.
King was singing books in Harlem on that day in 1958, a decade before, and recalled to the crowd at Mason Temple, according to The Guardian reported.
James Lawson, the pastor of Memphis’ Centenary United Methodist Church, later reported that while he was listening to the speech, he thought the subject of his attempted murder was an odd one for King to choose.
“I said to myself, ‘I’ve never heard him do that in public in quite that way,'” he recalled.
