Don Wildman

Is it a direct conflict between Elijah Muhammad and him?

Yes.

During this time, he decides to found his own version of this, right?

He breaks away completely and creates his own organization called the Muslim Mosque Incorporated.

Is that right?

That's correct.

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?