This chapter examines the contradictory trends that buffeted black America in the 1960s. On the one hand, the edifice of Jim Crow had begun to crumble, a reality that received legislative sanction in 1964 and, notably, 1965, with the passage of the Voting Rights Act. On the other hand, this victory was attained while the most sophisticated, cosmopolitan, and battle-ready fighters—W.E.B. Du Bois, Shirley Graham, Claudia Jones, Paul Robeson, Ben Davis, and William Patterson—were under attack, with courage required to associate with them. Among these were the spectacular rise of the group that came to be called the Nation of Islam, which had been founded decades earlier but only gained traction in the 1960s when the “other” radical alternative—represented by Patterson—was battered and bludgeoned.