There are two ways of interpreting what Akbar said: He could have been saying that action, not skin color, was the determining factor in any moral judgment; or he could have been spouting the Muslim line that the white man can prove he is not evil by nature by acting correctly. Either way, what Akbar was saying is a long way from the strong line preached by both Malcolm X and Elijah. And when this is coupled with Akbar’s public denunciation of those Negro leaders who call other Negro leaders names, his speech takes on an even stranger character. Akbar closed his talk with a call for unity among black men all over the world. “What we must have,” he said, “is unity among American Negroes; once we get that, Africans are willing to help us with men, guns, and know-how. Then we can proceed to unity of black men all over the world.” As Akbar finished, the crowd applauded with vigor; they were all aware that they had witnessed a peculiar thing. First, Akbar had not mentioned the separate state a single time during his speech. This is indeed strange coming from the son of the Messenger, the man whose basic tenet is a call for “several states” where Negroes can form their own government. Second, Akbar did not once use the phrase, “The Honorable Elijah Muhammad.” He made only one reference to his father, and that came when he said, “The Teacher tells us that we should prepare ourselves for black unity.” Most of all, Akbar’s talk had none of the strident denunciations of white men that one expects to hear at a Black Muslim rally. It was Malcolm X who pointed up the strangeness of the doctrine we had heard.