Clarence Lang

who are not in the Nation of Islam, who do not accept the teachings of the Nation of Islam, who look askance at this worldview of the Nation of Islam that sees white people as literal devils, right, whose time is going to come to an end due to Allah's intervention.

There's this whole cosmology that's off-putting to a lot of people, but people enjoy working with Malcolm because he's sincere.

He's committed, he's dedicated to improving the lot of Black people.

And those individuals have an impact on Malcolm as well.

So he's working with individuals like Adam Clayton Powell, right?

The congressman.

People who are well outside of the vein of the Nation of Islam and even Black nationalism.

And they're pushing him too.

And one of the things that he starts to recognize and appreciate, that even though

he opposes the dominant ideology of the civil rights movement, i.e.

liberal integrationism, he has to respect the fact that those activists are putting themselves on the line to advance the interests of Black people in ways that the Nation of Islam is not, because the Nation of Islam stance is not to engage politically.

And so Malcolm becomes increasingly frustrated with that contradiction, right?

That he's critical of the Martin Luther King juniors, the A. Philip Randolphs, but they are actually on the front lines and the Nation of Islam is at a distance criticizing from the sidelines.

And in fact, there's one individual, I think it was James Farmer, may have been, I could be wrong, who calls Malcolm out at one point and says, you know, all this talk is good and well, but what is the Nation of Islam doing

in terms of addressing these situations that the other of us are putting our lives literally on the line to pursue.

And so that begins to become abrasive, and his efforts to try and move the Nation of Islam into more upfront political activism is constantly dashed, right?

And at the same time, he's becoming concerned about signs of corruption among the uppermost leadership because he lives, Malcolm himself lives a very Spartan in his family, Spartan lifestyle.

He marries Betty X in 1958.

They have children, should mention that.

So he has a family at a certain point.