I have asked James Shabazz, I've asked other people who are members of the OAAU, Herman Ferguson and others, what led to that disastrous decision [that the guards didn't carry weapons]? James Shabazz said to me with a shrug, you just didn't know Malcolm. Malcolm was adamant, and that whatever Malcolm wanted, that's what we just did.

When this country here was first being founded, there were 13 colonies. The whites were colonized. They were fed up with this taxation without representation. So some of them stood up and said, liberty or death.

Elements within Malcolm's X own entourage, some of them were very angry with some of the changes that had occurred with Malcolm. One source of anger, curiously enough, was that - was the tension between MMI and OAAU, that the MMI, the Muslim Mosque Incorporated, these were women and men who had left the Nation of Islam out of loyalty to Malcolm, but then Malcolm continued to evolve rapidly.

In November 1963, [Malcolm X] gives his famous message to the grassroots address in Detroit, which really kind of marks off the real turning point in his own development.

The crisis of black politics can only be resolved through the development of multiclass, multiracial, progressive political structures.

I believe that the FBI clearly was concerned, wanted to monitor and disrupt Malcolm X wherever possible.

Malcolm X had a clear vision and an understanding that we were - that he was a part of a broad freedom struggle. As his vision became more internationalist and pan-African, as he began, especially in 1964, after seeing the example of anti-colonial revolutions abroad and began to articulate and incorporate a socialist analysis economically into his program, he clearly became a threat to the US state.