Don Wildman

Yeah.

This is March of 1964 when he leaves the Nation of Islam and creates this new organization, which of course would be a major threat.

You have their engine of national recruitment, this incredibly compelling man, still very young in his 30s.

representing a brand new idea in the black nationalist movement.

Of course, this is going to raise hackles, I suppose.

The next month, 1964, in April 1964, he performs a Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca and he converts to Orthodox Sunni Islam.

All of these things are very, very heady ideas to many people to consider.

But this is where this man is at at this point.

Of course.

And it was these moves that he was making in the 64 into 65 period that really put him in danger.

This is what starts a real controversy that people start sending death threats and all the rest of it.

Did he know where those threats were coming from?

We'll just go through those events in detail in a moment, but I just want to really emphasize the change in his thinking that had happened at this point.

A much more universalist idea was what was behind the Muslim Mosque organization, right?

That's right.

Can you define that more, explain where he had landed as a man?

Because certainly when you see the movies, there's a kind of a very general idea there, and it seems in Malmstrom's case that that would be very specific and very certain.

Yeah.

The tragedy, of course, is a man and a husband and father dies, but it's also that this amazing intellect and this amazing spirit had arrived at a place which was unique.

And no telling where that would have led to, you know?