Clarence Lang

And so individuals use X rather than their given surnames, the argument being that those were not native, natural to them.

Right.

And that that represented a break from the past that could not be recovered.

And so the X was used as a representative, as a signifier of the unknown, of that unknown past.

Right.

And so and probably so.

And so Malcolm, like any other individual, male or female, who joined the Nation of Islam at a certain point,

in your conversion, in your recruitment, you took on X as your surname.

Hence, Malcolm does that.

And cultural revitalization, right?

You would get different responses to that.

Some would say 2,000, some would say 5,000.

We can safely say thousands.

That's correct.

And I think that one point, of course, to help establish context, during the 40s, during the 1950s, while Malcolm is incarcerated and when he's

has been released from prison and is slowly growing a Nation of Islam.

During that period of time, a major post-World War II civil rights movement is growing and developing.

It becomes identified with Martin Luther King Jr., but of course, he's not the only individual who's leading, participating in that, obviously, but it becomes largely associated with him after the Montgomery bus boycott.

in 1955.

So there's a spirit of racial reform that's spreading.