Melissa Harris-Perry survives attempted attack

(Special from HipHop Wired) — MSNBC host and Wake Forest University professor Melissa Harris-Perry narrowly escaped an attempt on her life while covering last week’s Iowa Caucuses. In a recent piece, Harris-Perry retells the close encounter with a supposed white nationalist while attending the caucuses with her students.

Harris-Perry, who is married to the former executive director of the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center James Perry and who lived in New Orleans for several years, wrote about the incident on Tuesday (Feb. 2) via the Anna Julia Cooper (AJC) Center’s website, sharing in chilling detail how an unidentified man rudely questioned her MSNBC credentials apparently unaware of who she was. As the man made an aggressive move, a friend of Harris-Perry’s steps in between the pair after the man asks how the professor received her credentials.

From the AJC Center’s website:

I am not sure if it is how he spat the word credentialed, or if it is how he took another half step toward me, or if it is how he didn’t respond to my question, but the hairs on my arm stood on end. I ignored it. Told myself everything was ok.

“Well. It is not exactly a credential…” I began.
“But why you? Why would they pick you?”

Now I know something is wrong. Now his voice is angry. Now a few other people have stopped talking and started staring. Now he is so close I can feel his breath. Before I can answer his unanswerable question of why they picked me, he begins to tell me why he has picked me.

“I just want you to know why I am doing this.”

Oh – there is a this. He is going to do a this. To me. And he is going to tell me why.

Harris-Perry, frozen momentarily with fear, then says that the man muttered something about “Nazi Germany” and “rise to power” before she and her friend jump and startle the man who then gets away. Despite alerting the hotel security of the incident, Harris-Perry states that minimal attention was paid to the matter.

In the piece, Harris-Perry credits her students with saving her life.

This article originally published in the February 8, 2016 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.