The Stokes affair nonetheless loosed a string of temple disaffection by younger men longing for action. Faced with charges that the Muslims talked tough but did not act even when police killed their followers, Malcolm increasingly talked even tougher as he made his rounds. Peppering his speeches with fewer remarks like “the Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us . . . ,” he sometimes sounded more like the black nationalist revolutionary the FBI made him out to be. Gone were the cocksure assertions of the Muslim faith as droplets of doubt began to appear. Negroes, he now maintained, were only
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