Josh Clark

And one of the things he sets his sights on, Chuck, is the American, essentially the racial struggle in the United States that was...

really beginning to become part of the American preoccupation at the same time.

In the 50s, it was really civil rights movement was really starting to take shape.

And this again, this is totally opposite from what you were saying Elijah Muhammad wanted, which was isolation, separatism, not just from white America, from non-black Muslim black America, too.

Like he had no inclination to join the civil rights movement.

Elijah Muhammad to join the civil rights fight because they weren't black Muslims, so therefore they were essentially lesser versions of black Americans.

Yeah, that's why they were also really highly critical of the NAACP is because they essentially said white people had, they'd allowed white people to join and the white people had taken over and were now steering the boat.

So you could not be white and be, join the Nation of Islam.

Sorry, they would not let you in, still won't as far as I know.

Yeah.

And he was worried also that, you know, it would it would scare the white coalition that he'd helped build to support the civil rights movement away from the civil rights movement.

All of a sudden he's like, oh, yeah.

And also this guy's philosophy, too.

We're going to incorporate the race war.

Yeah.

He had every reason to stay away from Malcolm X and frankly, kind of wisely did.

But like you said, this was the media saying, like, you got Malcolm X, you got MLK.

And that was like both of them kind of fostered that idea, because if you had Malcolm X and, you know, you didn't listen to MLK, then we were going to go the Malcolm X way as far as America was concerned in the near future.

So we should probably go the way that Martin Luther King is suggesting.

Exactly.