eparate
society. They claimed that blacks should not be ashamed of either their
color or their heritage. They taught that the black man had had a history
of which to be proud. The sense of self-acceptance and pride which they
taught came as good news to ghetto residents who realized that they could
never be assimilated into white, middle-class America.

With the conversion of Malcolm Little, better known as Malcolm X, the
Muslims gained a dynamic speaker who did much to popularize and spread
their teaching. Although the peculiar doctrines and puritanical practices
of the Muslims prevented many from joining the movement, the number of
its sympathizers grew rapidly. Malcolm X was able to appeal to ghetto
residents in a way that Martin Luther King could not.

King, obviously, had had all the advantages of a middle-class home.
Malcolm, however, had started at the bottom, and ghetto residents could
readily identify with him. King had gone to college and had even earned a
doctorate. Malcolm gained his reputation "hustling" on the streets of
Boston and New York and also from teaching himself while serving a
sentence in prison.

In 1964 Malcolm X was forced to break with Elijah Muhammed. Apparently,
Elijah Muhammed had become threatened by Malcolm's charismatic appeal,
and he feared he might lose his leadership in the movement. After a
pilgrimage to Mecca as well as visits to several newly independent
African nations, Malcolm returned to America ready to start a movement of
his own. Although he believed more strongly than ever in Islam, he came
to feel that several of the teachings of the Black Muslims were
erroneous. One reason was that in Mecca he had worshipped with people
from all races. As a result, he no longer felt that the white man, per
se, was the "devil":

"In the past, yes, I have made sweeping indictments of all white people.
I never will be guilty of that again--as I know now that some white
people are truly sincere, that some truly are capable of being brotherly
toward a black man. The true Islam has shown me that a blanket indictment
of all white people is as wrong as when whites make blanket indictments
against blacks."

Malcolm intended to continue teaching Islam in America, and he insisted
that a religious faith was a help to any political movement.
Nevertheless, he also intended to form a secular organization which could
appeal to a wide variety of persons, and form the center of a new black
militancy