Clarence Lang

take most of the children, put them into foster care.

She herself was committed to a mental facility where she stayed for the greater part of her life, well into the 1950s or thereabouts.

So the family was broken up over that and Malcolm ended up in foster care and that intensified the instability of the life that he was experiencing as a young boy.

Yeah, thank you for that question.

It's interesting that the 1930s,

is a period where a lot of the 1920s, but certainly we see a proliferation in the 1930s of a number of small black nationalist sects or organizations.

The Nation of Islam was one of them.

The Nation of Islam was not the only one.

It was formed in the early 1930s in Detroit, Michigan.

To some extent, it was a reflection of the crisis of the Great Depression, this period of economic turmoil and crisis that sent a lot of people, certainly in Black communities, to what we might call millenarian religious and political organizations, trying to make meaning out of the crisis, this serious economic calamity.

This occurred in white communities as well.

So you have individuals like Father Coughlin,

who are able to appeal to masses of people who are looking for leadership and guidance in this particular moment.

So the Nation of Islam is one organization along the lines that emerges from that standpoint.

It's led by an individual named Elijah Poole, who becomes Elijah Muhammad, the messenger of Allah himself.

but it's a small, tiny organization at this time.

Malcolm's family at that moment doesn't have any interaction with the Nation of Islam, but these are parallel developments that are occurring as black people are trying to figure out how to address, to find meaning, to find direction, to find momentum, movement forward during the Depression.

One of many manifestations.

That's correct.

And, you know, I mean, to take even a step backwards, you know, as a what we would call a pre-adolescent and early adolescent teenager.