Biography
TONY MARTIN has taught at Wellesley
College, Massachusetts, since 1973. He was tenured in 1975 and
has been a full professor of Africana Studies since 1979. Prior
to coming to Wellesley he taught at the University of Michigan-Flint,
the Cipriani Labour College (Trinidad) and St. Mary's College
(Trinidad). He has been a visiting professor at the University
of Minnesota, Brandeis University, Brown University and The Colorado
College. He also spent a year as an honorary research fellow at
the University of the West Indies, Trinidad.
Professor Martin has authored or compiled and edited eleven books,
including Literary Garveyism: Garvey, Black Arts and the Harlem
Renaissance and the classic study of the Garvey Movement,
Race First: the Ideological and Organizational Struggles of
Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association.
In 1965 he qualified as a barrister-at-law at the Honourable Society
of Gray's Inn (London). He did his M.A. and Ph.D. in history at
Michigan State University and the B.Sc. honours degree in economics
at the University of Hull (England).
Professor Martin is currently working on biographies of three
Caribbean women Amy Ashwood Garvey, Audrey Jeffers and Trinidad's
Kathleen Davis ("Auntie Kay"). He is also nearing completion
of The Afro-Trinidadian: Endangered Species/Oh, What a Nation
and a study of European Jewish immigration to Trinidad in
the 1930's.
Incident at Wellesley: Jewish Attack on Black Academics
by Tony Martin
In January 1993, I was minding my own business and teaching my
Wellesley College survey course on African American History when
a funny thing happened. The long arm of Jewish intolerance reached
into my classroom. Unknown to me, three student officers of the
Jewish Hillel organization (campus B'nai B'rith stablemates of
the Anti-Defamation League), sat in on my class and remained for
a single period only. Their purpose was to monitor my presentation.
As one of them explained in a campus meeting later, Jewish students
had noticed The Secret Relationship Between
Blacks and Jews among my offerings in the school bookstore.
The book documents the considerable Jewish involvement in the
transatlantic African slave trade, the dissemination of which
knowledge they, as Jews, considered an "anti-Semitic"
and most "hateful" act.
One hour and ten minutes undercover convinced these three young
Jews that I was teaching this book as a legitimate historical
work. They seemed to think that it belonged rather in the realm
of "hate literature."
There appears to have been some prior collusion between the Hillel
students and their adult counterpart, the Anti-Defamation League,
for Hillel almost immediately began passing out ADL materials
targeting the book. These included, inevitably, an ADL reprint
of "Black Demagogues and Pseudo-Scholars" by Harvard
University's Henry Louis Gates, Jr., (New York Times,
20 July, 1992), African America's most notorious Judaeophile.
In the weeks and months to come, Gates would be quoted in nearly
every attack on my use of the book, as proof that "all"
respectable, distinguished and right thinking African American
scholars condemned it. The Jews unilaterally anointed Gates with
the mantle of head African American scholar in charge of Black
academia. He became, in their contrived and wishful thinking,
the personification of the entire African American community.
The Hillel activists left my class and headed straight for the
president, dean and associate dean of the college. They then went
to the current chair of my own department, Africana Studies. Like
their elders (for example in the American Israel Public Affairs
Committee, by whom Hillel operatives are formally trained in the
art of deception and dirty tricks), they evinced a bulldog-like
instinct for going after the jugular of their intended victims.
For the last three decades of Jewish assaults on Black progress,
that jugular has usually meant the economic livelihood of Black
people.
By the time that four of the Hillel executive and their rabbi
director came to see me they had already mobilized those they
perceived of as capable of doing me grievous economic harm. Their
task was made considerably less arduous by the fact that the dean
of the college, incoming acting president, outgoing chair of the
board of trustees, incoming chair of the board of trustees, head
and deputy head of the student government, most of the faculty
holding endowed chairs and a goodly portion of the tenured faculty,
not to mention sundry other persons in high positions, were all
Jews. The dean of the college is also on the advisory board of
the Friends of Wellesley Hillel.
Dr. Martin's Self-Defense
In January 1993, on the eve of the Jewish onslaught against me
(for teaching that Jews were implicated in the African slave trade),
I already had some interest in Black-Jewish relations. It is difficult
not to, if one teaches African American history. I had also done
some research on Jewish refugee immigration to Trinidad in the
1930's and '40's. This research was facilitated by the cordial
cooperation of Jewish informants in two Caribbean countries. United
States Jews encountered in the course of the research displayed
the gamut of reactions, from friendliness to suspicion to hostility.
The idea of a Black man turning up at a Jewish archive to research
Jewish history proved unnerving to some. (On the other hand, Jewish
scholars are a familiar sight at Black archives, not only as researchers
but sometimes even as staff archivists. One of the most prestigious
of the Black archival repositories, the Moorland- Spingarn Collection
of Howard University, is actually part-named after a Jew).
At one of the Jewish archives I visited, the lady in charge characteristically
put me through the appropriate litmus test. "Do you know
Len Jeffries?" she asked, with the mien of one presiding
over an inquisition. "I wonder if knowing Len Jeffries automatically
disqualifies me from using these archives," I mused to myself.
But, like George Washington, I could not tell a lie, so I was
constrained to be forthcoming. "Yes, I know him," I
replied. "We are professional colleagues. I have known him
for many years." She was visibly taken aback by this answer
and I feared the worst.
She regained her composure, however, and the interrogation continued.
"Have you read The Secret Relationship
Between Blacks and Jews?" "I have heard of it,"
I replied truthfully, "but I have not read it. Funny enough,
though, I passed someone selling it on the sidewalk just a few
minutes ago." My reading of the book was still a few months
into the future, but already I could not fathom what all the fuss
was about. "If it is established," I suggested to her,
"that white people enslaved Africans, and if Jews were an
important part of white society, then why should anyone be upset
by a book that illustrates the Jewish role in the slave trade?"
My innocent question now appears to have been imbued with prophetic
insight. Or maybe it was simply a case of famous last words. The
fact that I cannot remember with precision what her response was,
in an otherwise clearly recollected conversation, probably reflects
the imprecision of her answer. She could not come up with a coherent
rationale for her denunciation of the book. As I reflect in hindsight
on that conversation, with the benefit of six months of the Jewish
onslaught to guide me, it seems as if the major Jewish agencies
issue edicts, as it were. Then the Jewish rank and file simply
fall in line. "Theirs not to make reply,/Theirs not to reason
why,/ Theirs but to do and die...." The power of the Jewish
leadership over their constituency is impressive indeed, the presence
of some dissenting voices notwithstanding.
But our conversation was not over yet. It was to take an even
more unexpected turn. "Have you heard of the Crown Heights
riots?" she enquired, referring to tensions between the Black
and Hasidic Jewish communities in Brooklyn, New York. A confrontation
had been triggered by the unpunished killing of young Gavin Cato
and the maiming of his cousin Angela Cato by a Hasidic vehicle,
as the children played on the sidewalk in front of their house.
A Jewish student, Yankel Rosenbaum, was killed in the ensuing
scuffles. "Yankel Rosenbaum was doing research right here,"
she said. "He was in here every day, reading the files, just
like you. He sat at the same table where we have placed your materials."
Even with my own personal Jewish onslaught still many months into
the future, this revelation proved a sobering one to me. And as
I ponder it with the benefit of a tempestuous hindsight, I wonder
what inscrutable fate brought me to this archive, to this conversation,
to Yankel Rosenbaum's table, at a time when my authorship of a
book called The Jewish Onslaught
would have seemed a bizarre improbability.
I could not know then that I would ere long be plunged into an
intense reading of Jewish and Black-Jewish history, covering many
lands and historical periods, as I sought to bring to my situation
a more wide-ranging perspective. The onslaught of the last six
months now threatens to turn me into an expert on Jewish history.
For that I must thank the purveyors of intolerance with whom I
have had to do battle of late.
What I offer here is an involved yet detached look at the onslaught
against me, from my unique vantage point as both intended victim
and historian. This is written in the heat of battle. Perhaps
time, further study and more reflection may either modify or enrich
the analysis offered here. But the immediacy of analysis can only
be captured now.
Over the last six months I have been fairly deluged with articles,
books, newspaper clippings, letters, unpublished documents and
references for further perusal. As if obeying the orders of an
unseen force, well-wishers (known and unknown) have seen to it
that my crash course in Black-Jewish history should not be wanting
in resource materials. Even the senders of hate and hostile mail
have fit into the plan, for their clippings have been useful and
informative.
Editorial Statement
Barely a week after the publication of The Jewish Onslaught, Wellesley's new president, Diana Chapman Walsh,
has taken the extraordinary step of issuing a formal denunciation
of the new book. In a December 9, 1993 statement disseminated
to all students, faculty, staff, alumnae and "friends of
the college" she declares as follows "We are profoundly
disturbed and saddened by Professor Martin's new book because
it gratuitously attacks individuals and groups at Wellesley College
through innuendo and the application of racial and religious stereotype."
Due to President Walsh's newness on campus, it can plausibly be
surmised that she has relied heavily on the opinions of her advisors.
The baleful influence of these shadowy figures is plainly evident
in the palpable one-sidedness of the presidential proclamation,
in its reliance on sweeping derogatory generalizations and in
its inability to support its assertions with documentation of
any sort. In all these ways and more the presidential statement
is reflective of official and quasi-official approaches of the
last twelve months.
Our new president has squandered a golden opportunity to bring
fresh leadership and even-handed tolerance to the present controversy.
Martin on the Presidential Denunciation of The Jewish Onslaught
The Jewish Onslaught was published as a response to the unprincipled
attacks, defamatory statements, assaults on my livelihood and
physical threats directed against me for several months. These
emanated principally from the Jewish community and its agents
and were triggered by my classroom use of a work detailing Jewish
involvement in the African slave trade. In The Jewish Onslaught
I sought to put my subjective situation into the context of deteriorating
Black-Jewish relations of recent decades. I also attempted to
evaluate the tactics used against me in the context of the well-documented
dirty tricks that the Jewish groups have used against me in the
context of the well-documented dirty tricks that the Jewish groups
have used against Andrew Young, Jesse Jackson, David Dinkins,
Minister Louis Farrakhan, Len Jeffries, Black parents in Ocean
Hill-Brownsville (Brooklyn) and any number of Euro-American individuals
and organizations.
The Jewish Onslaught is a book of analysis supported by
normal scholarly documentation. There is not a single "stereoptype"
or generalization in it that is not buttressed by evidence, either
from my personal experience of the last year or from the historical
record. I challenge President Walsh to move from her broad derogatory
generalizations to specific instances to prove otherwise.
President Walsh, like many of the Jewish spokespersons, has a
problem with my "recurrent" and allegedly "gratuitous"
utilization of "racial or religious identification of individuals...."
This is her way of saying that Black people are not allowed to
respond to Jews as Jews. Even after being attacked primarily by
the Hillel Foundation, American Jewish Committee, Anti-Defamation
League, American Jewish Congress, Jewish Community Relations Council
and every Jewish newspaper and spokesperson for miles around,
I am supposed to maintain the fiction that the onslaught against
me is ethnically and religiously indeterminate.
A recent article in Black Books Bulletin mentions over
twenty books on Black-Jewish relations in the personal library
of its author. The author is aware of only two books by Blacks
on the subject. If President Walsh (and the Jewish community)
are to have their way, then this will forever remain a one-way
discourse. I therefore ask again, as I asked in The Jewish
Onslaught, "What makes Jews so special? By what dispensation
in Adam's will do they enjoy monopolistic privileges over a debate
that concerns Blacks as well as Jews? Who has placed them beyond
the reach of scholarly enquiry and ethnic identification?"
President Walsh claims that The Jewish Onslaught "violates
the basic principles" of, among other things, the "norms
of civil discourse." Yet, in her zeal to uncover "innuendo"
in my work she seems to have missed the blatant lack of civility
in the many articles attacking me. Is she not aware of Professor
Marcellus Andrews' Wellesley News reference to me as a
"racist Pied Piper?" Did no one show her his description
of Wellesley's Black women as "intellectually weak and morally
lazy?" Did Mary Lefkowitz,
Mellon Professor in the Humanities, neglect to send President
Walsh a complimentary copy of her article in Measure (No.
118, September/October 1993), wherein she maliciously and scurrilously
alleged that I called a student "a white fucking bitch?"
Lefkowitz alleged further that "The young woman fell down
as a result of his onslaught and Martin bent over to continue
his rage at her." Did President Walsh not see, in her reading
of The Jewish Onslaught, the text of a racist cartoon by
a Wellesley alumna in the Boston Jewish Times? The cartoonist
designated Black women as "Ms. Washington" (no different
than the "Hymietown" remark that Jews claimed to be
so scandalized by) and seemed to suggest that Black students be
taught from the works of segregationists, Ku Kluxers and pseudo-scientific
racists. Did President Walsh not read the Jewish hate mail reproduced
in The Jewish Onslaught ? "I hate niggers to my very
bone marrow," ran a typical sentence. "Not all Jews
debate apes. Some of us want them all to die." I have been
a veritable oasis of civility in the present debate.
I agree with Justice Holmes, as quoted by President Walsh
"The best test of truth is the power of the thought to get
itself accepted in the competition of the market." The Jewish
onslaught has consistently striven to stifle the "competition
of the market" by its defamatory rantings and its demands
for my dismissal. The present presidential proclamation regrettably
ranges itself alongside this ignoble campaign.
But "the competition of the market" has yet managed
to assert itself, as can be seen in the steadily shifting positions
of the onslaught. From an initial denial that Jews had any role
in African slavery at all, there slowly emerged a reluctant admission
of minor and peripheral involvement. As the debate intensified
and the Jewish denial of the undeniable threatened to expose its
adherents to ridicule, the Washington Post (first among
major newspapers, to the best of my knowledge), was finally permitted
to admit the full extent of Jewish culpability. In a carefully
staged (and not at all pro-Black article) of October 17, 1993
the deniers of Jewish involvement in the African holocaust were
shown to be as wrong as they could be.
The present controversy demands honest dialogue, not crude attempts
at demonization. If President Walsh desires to extricate herself
from the hole into which she has fallen, let her collaborate with
me (and with interested students), on the convening at Wellesley
College of a serious scholarly conference on the role of Jews
in the African slave trade. She can invite Skip Gates, Cornel
West and anyone else acceptable to the Jewish establishment to
argue their case. I will nominate an equal number of scholars
to defend the perspective which I endorse. The spirit of Justice
Holmes will be lifted.
As my mother used to say, "One hand can't clap." As
Ray Charles was wont to soulfully sing, "It takes two to
tango."
Anti Martin
Hatred
Internet Threats
Amherst · An Internet computer message suggested the arming
of Jews to kill Blacks immediately following a scholarly address
on Black history to the University of Massachusetts community.
This threat of violence appeared in the Discussion Group for the
National Faculty Network, a collection of college professors throughout
the United States. The message was posted to the network the night
of the lecture in which Wellesley College professor Tony Martin
outlined the oppressive structure of the African slave trade.
The computer mailbox address indicated that the writer is a Jewish
professor at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts who attended
the event:
" Shalom all. I am still shaking right now....I just walked
in the door....I know with the Hillel here we are together in
a great community working on a response to the disgusting
events of tonight...but for now I am asking all of you for a response.
Learn to operate AK-47, and have good supply of ammunition, so
you will be ready when they come to kill us....
And how do we stop these anti-semites from speaking? I doubt there
is a way to stop them from speaking. They are more numerous and
more prepared to use raw brute force. Even if you could take them
to court and win an injuction against these bastards, it will
just be seized upon by the rest of the blacks as further evidence
of a Jewish conspiracy against blacks."
According to campus police, the gathering, sponsored by the Black
student organization, was completely peaceful and the participants
were law-abiding. Martin is the author of thirteen books and numerous
articles and is the world's foremost expert on the Marcus Garvey
movement. According to sources, Professor Martin was immediately
informed of the threat but would not comment on security operations.
Jew stalks Black professor
Russian-Jewish stalker claiming to be "on a mission"
threatened to attack Professor Tony Martin at his Wellesley College
office. Martin, whose best-selling book The Jewish Onslaught
examines the role of organized Jewry
in a slanderous attack on Afrocentricity, was unharmed and not
present during the April 21 incident.
A "profusely sweating" Alexander Nechaevsky, 34, told
campus police that after viewing a televised lecture by Dr. Martin
he found him to be "rude and a racist" and came to "confront"
him about his views. In the lecture Martin outlined the Jewish
origin of the Hamitic Myth which claims that Black humans are
cursed black by God and which provided justification for the African
slave trade.
Nechaevsky ranted that "he was not a Jewish wimp and that
he was from Russia where they know how to handle things."
He then conversed at length with a Jewish professor who has led
the campus onslaught against Martin.
Martin said that he is not surprised at the attack. "Part
of the Jewish onslaught against Black thinkers is to create an
atmosphere of intolerance which leads to violent confrontations."
Police ejected Nechaevsky and banned him from Wellesley College
property. Later, Martin's office received telephone threats saying
that "Tony Martin better watch his step."
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