The greatest mistake of the movement has been trying to organize a sleeping people around specific goals. You have to wake the people up first, then you'll get action.

Another reason for the separation was growing resentment by people within the Nation. Kennedy the Muslim leader cited the murders of Patrice Lumumba Congo leader of Medgar Evers civil rights leader and of the Negro girls bombed earlier this year in a Birmingham church. Malcolm X later said that violence by whites killed three of his father's brothers including one who was lynched.

For a dozen years Malcolm X was the public face of the controversial group but disillusionment with Nation of Islam head Elijah Muhammad led him to leave the Nation in March 1964. As a spokesman for the Nation of Islam he taught black supremacy and advocated separation of black and white Americans—in contrast to the civil rights movement's emphasis on integration.