Clarence Lang

And again, of course, it's short-lived.

That project is aborted by his assassination in February of 1965.

But that is also perceived as a challenge to the leadership of Elijah Muhammad as well.

And in the context of creating that organization, and this is an important point, Malcolm begins to break from

the racialist, if you will, cosmology of the Nation of Islam, and he moves to a different understanding about race and about the prospects for change and, in fact, the prospects of being able to work in meaningful ways with white activists.

Malcolm remains a black nationalist.

I want to be clear about that.

but his basis of critique becomes less about this cosmology that he had inherited from the Nation of Islam of white people being devils, right?

So that transformation occurs at that particular level, even though he remains a black nationalist.

But as he becomes an Orthodox Muslim,

A lot of those ideas that he had espoused and had had, he has to dispense with, right?

And he has to deal with the issues of white supremacy and racism as political questions rather than issues grounded in some kind of God-given or created nature that groups of people had, if that makes sense.

Well, if we take him at his word, he certainly saw that the threats were a consequence of his separation from the nation of Islam.

And in fact, in the Muhammad Speaks, there was very incendiary, overheated language about the need, you know, how do you deal with heretics?

There's only one way, right?

And so if you think about it, the fact that, you know, if you accept the premise that Elijah Muhammad was indeed the messenger of Allah,

to break from the messenger of Allah is to break with Allah himself.

And that is a very high crime.

And so now, you know, we can certainly appreciate the fact that that split served interests well beyond the nation of Islam.

So there were a number of groups, power in the United States that stood to benefit from Malcolm being liquidated, right?