Clarence Lang

Whether through assassination or otherwise.

But it would be dishonest to deny that it was a split with the Nation of Islam that really fueled the threats that began to mount on his life.

And of course, there's been a lot of conversation about the individuals who were arrested, the gunmen who were arrested for shooting Malcolm, who were members of the Nation of Islam, whether they...

were the ones who committed the murder, who actually killed Malcolm.

But I think there's no denying that Malcolm's death certainly served the interests of a set of leaders in the Nation of Islam, many of whom were jealous of Malcolm even when he was national spokesman.

But it also served interests outside of the Nation of Islam, if we think about the Federal Bureau of Investigation, authorities in New York, so on and so forth.

So there were a lot of people who stood to gain.

And that's where I land, rather than getting caught up in who actually killed Malcolm and for what reasons, who gained from it and who helped to create the context for his murder to be possible.

And that certainly included the Nation of Islam, but it was not just the Nation of Islam.

Yeah.

And I'll go back to the point that Malcolm died a Black nationalist.

And we've talked about what the premises of that were.

So he did not stray from that.

I think what we saw, based on the interactions that he had increasingly with a broad set of thinkers and other political leaders, if you will, a broadening of his thinking about

who were potential allies, who were partners, not just within the black community, but also external to the black community, even though he rooted himself fundamentally in the institutions of black community and wanted to build and expand those.

And so Muslim Mosque Incorporated was an effort to continue his commitment and the commitment of others to Islam, but through more conventional inclusive means.

And we can't say much more beyond that because much like the Organization of Afro-American Unity, they both had very short-lived existences.

But the trajectory was toward a more capacious

approach to political organizing and partnership.

That trajectory was clear.