When Harlem Nearly Killed King (15 page)

The earliest known version of the truth of what happened in the operating room was revealed after publication of a short article in
The New York Times
on January 14, 1996. The occasion was King’s birthday holiday. Reporter Sarah Kershaw interviewed the then ninety-four-year-old retired Maynard about the King stabbing incident and subsequent surgery. Maynard told Kershaw about being in the Plaza Theater in midtown Manhattan when King was brought in. He told her about the anger of Governor Harriman that it took so long for him to be located, and that after reassuring the governor he introduced himself to the prostrate King, then examined and reassured him. Then he told Kershaw that he immediately decided upon the manner in which King should be treated. After that, stated Maynard, “We started the surgery and it was carried out, I would say successfully.” But that was as much detail as he gave. After that Maynard went on to describe the surprise of one of King’s entourage the next day upon their arrival, that a “big white surgeon” had not been the one who performed the operation. Maynard concluded his account of the events to Kershaw by noting that Harlem Hospital was looked down upon, thus, “It was up to me to show the world that [we could save King].”

Two and a half weeks later John Cordice decided to break his silence regarding the details of what happened in the operating room. He wrote a letter to the
Times
acknowledging his silence over the years out of deference to Maynard. Then he went on to
detail why he was breaking his silence. He stated that he wanted “serious historians” to know what really happened, and that it was also because all the other surgeons involved in the drama other than Maynard were now dead (Emil Naclerio died in 1984 of congestive heart failure at the age of sixty-nine). Finally, in addition it was because it was quite possible that he, Cordice, was suffering from prostate cancer and his own days were numbered (Cordice would survive). Then he gave his account of what really happened. But the
Times
never published the letter, probably because in Kershaw’s article not enough detail of what took place was provided to merit refutation of anything Maynard said, and the details of the operation provided by Cordice ran far longer than letters in the
Times
usually run.

John Parker confirms Cordice’s account of what happened that day in the operating room, saying that Naclerio told him the same thing. Another surgeon confirms Cordice’s account as well. “The ones who performed all the surgery on King were Naclerio and Cordice,” says Dr. Van Bockstaele, a French-born heart surgeon at Harlem Hospital.

Bockstaele, who arrived at the hospital in the early sixties, goes on to describe the relationship between Maynard and Cordice as one that was the equivalent of father and son, implying that there was some admiration and resentment on the part of both. (In fact, in 1966 when Maynard was ready to retire as Chairman of the Department of Surgery, he would ask Cordice to take over the position; Cordice turned it down, citing a distaste for the administrative duties that came with the position.)

“Cordice was extremely good,” recalls Bockstaele. “But the word has to be used carefully.… Maynard was Machiavellian in general. And Cordice was, I won’t say pure, but he couldn’t understand such behavior. Cordice was the type of man who would have avoided killing a roach. Maynard, by contrast, was in a war for respect as a surgeon from the beginning of his career to the very end.”

Bockstaele agrees that though Maynard was the chief of surgery, he didn’t have the best surgical hands. He wasn’t as skillful in the operating room as Cordice and Naclerio were. And like Cordice, Maynard originally wanted to be something it would have been impossible for a Negro in his day and age to become: an engineer. Obviously, to Maynard the next best career was being a surgeon.

He also became a Francophone. Just before becoming chief of surgery, Aubré Maynard boned up on his French and traveled to France (where he eventually met and married a frenchwoman). He got to know eminent French cardiac and pancreatic surgeons. After becoming chairman of the department, he began inviting them to lecture and demonstrate at Harlem Hospital. Because he was able to communicate with the French people in a manner that the typical American could not, his French friends looked upon him as a man, not a Negro man. Maynard appreciated that. Thus he was constantly trying to make his image more continental. In Bockstaele’s opinion, one of the reasons for this was because when he came to the United States from Barbados as a teenager, Maynard was shocked by the level and degree of racism. He had trouble with many Afro-Americans because he was interested in becoming worldly and international, moving away from “blackness,” so to speak. Hence his
rough and bitter personality and his determination to prove himself. And, as speculated earlier, the reason behind his exaggeration of the role he played in saving Martin Luther King, Jr.

Which provides an interesting parallel. In their early years, both Cordice and Maynard had been shielded from the worst manifestations of Jim Crow, only to be shocked as teenagers by what they confronted. Yet Maynard, eighteen years Cordice’s senior, was more determined to prove himself in an extroverted manner. Perhaps this had everything to do with the fact that while as a young boy Cordice was shielded from Jim Crow’s worst manifestations in the Deep South, still, he knew that Caucasians were ultimately in power. By contrast, though Maynard spent his early years in Barbados, which was a British colony, day-to-day it was run primarily by non-Caucasians and had no Jim Crow and little discrimination based on skin color. All the discrimination he witnessed was based on class. Thus what he confronted in the U.S. was far more shocking, even though both he and Cordice faced these realities as teenagers in New York City, where racial discrimination was far less potent than in the Deep South. In addition Maynard trained in medicine in a different era than Cordice, the era when specialization was just developing. Hence all the more reason for Maynard to be insecure as the years passed.

And as the years went by, the fate of the other key operatives in that traumatic week of crisis for Martin Luther King, Jr., were as follows: After losing the 1958 gubernatorial election, Averell Harriman returned to private life until the election of John F. Kennedy as president two years later. Under Kennedy he would become Assistant
Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs; then Undersecretary for Political Affairs and chief negotiator for the nuclear test ban treaty with the Soviet Union. In subsequent administrations (1968 and 1969), he would take part in the Paris peace negotiations relative to the Vietnam War. And in the following years he would speak out for nuclear disarmament. Averell Harriman died in 1986.

As for Nelson Rockefeller, he served as governor of New York for four successive terms, initiating a series of innovative and expensive government programs to benefit all New Yorkers culturally and economically. Rockefeller would go on to become the quintessential liberal Republican (the type of politician virtually run out of the party by 1980), causing all Republicans with views similar to his to be known as “Rockefeller Republicans.” The biggest blow to his reputation, though, would come during the horrible Attica prison riot of 1971. Rockefeller ordered that the rebellion be crushed by force, killing thirty-seven men, nine hostages, and twenty-eight prisoners. Had he not ended the riot in such a shockingly brutal manner, it’s possible that Nelson Rockefeller would have realized his dream of becoming president of the United States, the office he ran for in subsequent years, never making it past the Republican primaries. The closest he would come to realizing this dream was when he was chosen in 1974 as vice president by the new president of the United States, Gerald Ford, upon the resignation of President Richard Nixon due to the Watergate scandal. After stepping down upon the election of Democrat Jimmy Carter as president, Rockefeller returned to private life. He died of a heart attack in 1979.

The controversial Lewis Micheaux who, unlike Aubré Maynard, eagerly indulged his black Africanness, would go onto further prosperity for many years after his protest of King’s actions. Eventually his bookstore would be said to gross over $1,500 per day, with an inventory of over a quarter of a million books about people of black African descent around the world. Michaeux would also open a branch in Hamilton, Bermuda. By 1969, he would be said to ship out ten thousand books per week to small bookstores and colleges around the country. Yet the following year he received an eviction notice compliments of one of the gubernatorial candidates who spoke at the 1958 rally he had protested. On the site where his bookstore was located, Governor Rockefeller’s administration intended to construct a seventeen-story state office building, one of the many mammoth building projects it spent state money on while he was governor, and a building that would be named for Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. This facility would replace the Hotel Teresa (which by then was no longer a hotel) as the tallest structure on the Harlem skyline. After his eviction, Michaeux’s bookstore was moved to a spot on the corner of 125th Street and Lenox Avenue. Lewis Micheaux would live into his nineties, dying at the age of ninety-two in 1976, celebrated as a virtual statesman at a funeral attended by numerous dignitaries.

As mentioned earlier, Emil Naclerio died of congestive heart failure in 1984 at the age of sixty-nine. Aubré Maynard, by contrast, would live to be almost one hundred. He died on March 20, 1999, at the age of ninety-seven. Upon his death there was barely a ripple at Harlem Hospital due to the fact that he was so disliked.
The following day,
The New York Times
featured a prominent obituary again claiming that Maynard had saved King. There would be no formal funeral. But there would be a memorial service two months later at Harlem Hospital. And it took some doing to get the hospital to do even that, not only because Maynard had been so disliked but because he hadn’t been a real presence at the hospital for thirty-two years. Dr. Gene Ann Polk organized the affair, which took place in the Herbert G. Cave Auditorium of the hospital. And interestingly, rather than saying that Maynard had saved King, the memorial service obituary would state that Maynard was “credited” with saving King. Only about fifty people attended, including the elderly daughters of Louis T. Wright (Barbara and Jane), who had careers as physicians themselves. During the service, conspicuous for her presence was a Ms. Helen Gee, a nurse who once worked for Maynard. Gee described a kind deed performed by Maynard. She married her Chinese husband during the height of World War II when prejudice against Asians was extremely high. As a result, she could find no one to serve as witness to the marriage—except for Aubré de Lambert Maynard.

Others who spoke included Dr. Bockstaele and Dr. John Parker. Prominent among those absent from the service would be John Cordice, who retired from the practice of thoracic surgery in 1994 and is still alive today. Cordice was just one of the many who couldn’t bring himself to attend due to so many mixed feelings about interactions with Maynard. Maynard’s remains were cremated, after which his widow (with whom he had no children) returned to live in France.

NOTES

1.
All information on Montgomery Boycott victory and aftermath for King:
Bearing the Cross
, by David Garrow (Quill William Morrow, 1999), pp. 11–109;
Parting the Waters: America in the King Years
, by Taylor Branch (Simon and Schuster, 1988) pp. 128–271;
Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
, by Martin Luther King, Jr., (Ballantine Books edition, 1960), pp. 11–181.

2.
1921 Montgomery statute prohibiting protests without just cause: Branch,
Parting the Waters, op. cit
. p. 168.

3.
“To prepare and preach sermons is to use up creative energy …,”
ibid
. p. 226.

4.
Stride Toward Freedom
not needing chapter on Negro self-improvement: Garrow,
Bearing the Cross, op. cit
., p. 105.

5.
Quotes from “Stride Toward Freedom”:
Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
, by Martin Luther King, Jr., (Ballantine Books edition, 1960), pp. 12, 35, 109, 116, 180.

6.
Levison and Rustin leaving names out of credits for
Stride Toward Freedom:
Bayard Rustin: Troubles I’ve Seen, by Jervis Anderson, (HarperCollins, 1997), p. 210.

1.
Background of Harriman and Rockefeller families: “A Voter’s Choice of Millionaires,” by Theodore White,
Life
magazine, September 22, 1958.

2.
Rockefeller’s career accomplishments up to 1958: “Why You Should Vote for Rockefeller” campaign handout, located in Averell Harriman Collection, manuscript division at Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

3.
Harriman’s career accomplishments up to 1958: “Advances Under the First Harriman Administration” campaign handout, located in Averill Harriman Collection, manuscript division at Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.