Peeler
2022-11-05 03:58:08 UTC
By Prof. Tony Martin
First of all, thank you very much, Greg, for the introduction. Id
like to thank also the IHR and Mark Weber particularly for inviting me
here. Im very happy to be here, to be part of this event. I like
long-winded topics, at least topic titles, so Ill read the topic
which I have selected for today. Its as follows: Jewish Tactics as
Exemplified in the Controversy Over Jewish Involvement in the
Transatlantic Slave Trade. So I wont be speaking that much on the
controversy itself. What Im trying to do is to use my subjective
experience, that is, the experience Ive had, for close to a decade
now, in dealing with this controversy.
And what Im going to try to do now -- to use my concrete, subjective
experience on the firing line, so to speak. And Im going to try to
extract from my experience certain basic sort of tactics that I think
the Jewish lobby has used over the years pertaining to my particular
situation. But in trying to extract these tactics from my own
situation, I suspect that I may very well resonate with the experience
of some other people here, because my suspicion is that there tends to
be a generalized practice which transcends your particular situation.
So, even though in my case I was dealing with a specific situation --
the transatlantic slave trade -- my suspicion is that the kinds of
tactics which were used against me may be not very dissimilar to those
experienced by many other folks who have been involved in other kinds
of disputes with this particular lobby.
The first thing I should do by way of introduction is just to
basically summarize precisely what my controversy was. I know its
familiar to many people here, but Im sure not to everybody in this
audience. As was mentioned a minute ago in the introduction, I teach
at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. For many years Ive taught a
survey course in African-American history. This is a one semester
course, that moves very rapidly over the whole gamut of
African-American history. In 1993 I introduced to this course a book
which is on sale here, a book which then was fairly new, a book which
I myself had only just recently become introduced to. This book, which
is published by the historical research department of the Nation of
Islam, is entitled The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews.
And what that book did, relying primarily on sources written by Jews,
and Jewish sources of a variety of types, is to try to sort of
synthesize the existing information on Jewish involvement in the slave
trade, the bringing of Africans as slaves from Africa to the so-called
new world. There wasnt that much in the book that was new -- all the
information, practically, was secondary information, which had been
already published, although hidden away to a large extent in very
esoteric Jewish journals, which the average Jew, I discovered later,
had no idea about.
Nevertheless, it wasnt new information. It was new to many people,
including myself, and I found it very interesting that even though I
had taught African-American history for many years, I had been only
dimly aware of the role of Jews in that slave trade. What I discovered
was that the Jewish role in that slave trade had been very cleverly
camouflaged for many, many years. Where Jews were involved, usually
they tended not to be identified as Jews, whereas where Christians
were involved, or where Muslims were involved. there was ready
identification of such persons by their ethnicity, by their religious
affiliation, and so on. In the case of Jews, they would be called
other things -- Portuguese, Spanish, Brazilian, whatever. But, you
know, that crucial identification tended to be obscured. So, as a good
professor I think Im a good professor. Im always on the lookout
for new information, to enrich my classes. So I was very fascinated by
this new information, and decided to add a few readings from this book
in my class. And thats when, as the saying goes, all hell broke
loose. [Laughter]
Apparently, I didnt realize it, but I actually stumbled into a
controversy which was already brewing because the book had apparently
caused some consternation in Jewish circles. And its only afterwards,
when I went back and did my research, that I discovered that one or
two editorials had already appeared, by way of the Jewish power
structure, in a sense warning people like myself to stay away from the
book. There already apparently had been a full-page op ed piece in The
New York Times, one that, I was told, was the largest, longest op ed
that had ever been published in that paper. It was actually typeset in
the form of a Star of David. It was written by someone called Henry
Lewis Gates of Harvard University, one of the black spokesmen for the
Jewish lobby. Even the paper from my basic home town, the Boston
Globe, had carried an editorial, which I was unaware of at the time,
not long before I began to use the book. And in a sense, the purpose
of these editorials and op eds was to warn folks to stay away from
that book, or else. But me, in my foolhardiness, ignored the warnings,
being largely unaware of the warnings in the first place. And so I
stumbled into this problem.
In fact Jews had been involved not only in the African slave trade,
but also, and for a very long period of time, in a variety of other
slave trades as well. Apparently, they had actually dominated slavery
and the slave trade in medieval times. A couple of days ago, while on
the plane on the way here, I was re-reading a Ph. D. dissertation from
1977 [The Ebb and Flow of Conflict: A History of Black-Jewish
Relations through 1900] by a man called Harold D. Brackman, who is a
functionary of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. In his dissertation, which
details Black-Jewish relations from ancient times up to 1900, he
actually acknowledges the fact that Jews were the principal slave
traders in the world for several hundred years -- although, and in
typical fashion, he puts a very interesting spin on it. He
acknowledges, as I guess he has to, that Jews were the major slave
traders in the world, trading slaves everywhere from Russia to western
Europe, to India, to China -- but he says that they dominated the
world trade only for a few hundred years -- only. [laughter] He said
that they were the main slave traders from the eighth century to the
twelfth century -- but that was no big thing. It was only a few
hundred years.
I discovered also that the Jews were very instrumental in the
ideological underpinning for the African slave trade -- the notorious
Hamitic myth -- which more than anything else has provided a sort of
ideological underpinning or rationale for the slave trade. This comes
out of the Talmud. In fact, Harold Brackman himself acknowledges that
this was the first explication of the story in the Biblical book of
Genesis about Ham, the so-called progenitor of the African race,
having been cursed by Noah, and so on. But apparently, according to
Brackman, the Talmud was the first place that put a racist spin on
this story. The Biblical story was racially neutral, but the Talmud
apparently put a very awful racist spin on this story, which later on
became the basis, the ideological underpinning, for the African slave
trade. So all of this I was to discover as I became embroiled in the
controversy.
One of the things that interested me, too, was that the Jewish element
was apparently also a major element in what came to be known in the 19
th century as the white slave trade. The white slave trade was a major
multinational, international trading in women for immoral sexual
purposes, as prostitutes, and so on. And I found, too, that Jewish
entrepreneurs in Europe apparently were also major figures in that
so-called slave trade.
So I became aware of all of this. Just to summarize briefly what I
discovered in the book, The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and
Jews, and in the subsequent readings, with regard to the African slave
trade, is that once it got going in the 15th century, the Jews again
were a very important part of it. The book was not suggesting, just I
have never suggested, that the Jews were the only people involved, or
even the major people involved. My basic point has always been that
whereas everybody else that Im aware of who was a part of the slave
trade has acknowledged being part of it. In fact, many of the people
who were a part of the genesis of the slave trade later also became
part of the abolitionist movement to end the trade. But as far as I
know, the Jewish element is the only one that has resisted
acknowledging its participation in this trade. In fact, it has gone
beyond merely resisting knowledge of this information coming out. It
has become very upset when this information has come to the fore.
And that has been my basic problem. Why? Whats so special about this
group that places itself beyond the pale, so to speak -- no pun
intended -- beyond the pale of criticism. And whereas any other group
can be criticized, this group -- it seems to me -- is beyond
criticism. Especially for me as a black person, I become very upset if
someone tries to walk into my classroom to tell me that I, as a black
person teaching black history, have to sort of regard their
involvement in my history as somehow out of bounds.
So, after becoming involved in this history, via the Hamitic myth,
Jews were some of the important financiers of this slave trade in the
very early periods. One of the major multi-national corporations that
financed the Atlantic slave trade very early on was the Dutch West
India Company. As we know, the Jews had been chased out of Spain, and
chased out of Portugal. The Netherlands was the one area which
welcomed them to some degree. And this was right around the same time,
the 15th century, that the slave trade was gearing up -- so they were
positioned, geographically and in other ways, to become an important
element in the financing of the Dutch West India Company, a major
multinational corporation that was involved in the slave trade.
In the early 17th century Jews were, in fact, a major element in the
slave trade in places like Brazil and Surinam in South America, in
places like Curacao in the West Indies, and in Jamaica, Barbados and
other places. I discovered that they were also very well positioned in
this country -- that many of the traders in colonial times who brought
slaves across the Atlantic to this country were in fact Jewish
ship-owners and slave traders. Some of the best known names in
colonial North America who were involved in that traffic were people
like Aaron Lopez of Newport, Rhode Island, who was one of the
best-known names of all.
I discovered that Jews owned many of the ancillary corporations that
sort of fed into the slave trade. For example, rum distilling was a
major business that was ancillary to the slave trade because rum was
used as an item of trade, to exchange for slaves in West Africa. And
most of the rum distilleries in places like Boston and elsewhere in
New England were, I believe, owned by Jews, and so on.
I discovered that according to the 1830 census, even though Jews were
a small proportion of the population in North America, nevertheless
they were inordinately represented among the slave owners. Yes, they
were a small portion of the population overall, but on a percentage
basis that were significant. Jewish historians who have analyzed the
1830 census have discovered that whereas something like 30-odd percent
of the white population may have owned one or more slaves in the
South, for Jewish households it was over 70 percent. So according to
an analysis of the 1830 census by Jewish historians, Jews were more
than twice as likely, on a percentage basis, to own slaves.
I also discovered that Jews, despite their involvement in the slave
trade, were very few and far between in the abolitionist movement.
They were much, much less likely than other groups to be involved in
this movement. So that in a nutshell, then, is the set of facts that
caused me to become involved in this interesting controversy. And what
I want to do, then, is to dwell not on the facts themselves, but on
what I perceive to be the main tactics that were used, because I found
myself, like I said, on the front line of this situation, and I became
very fascinated, looking at their tactics. And the more I began to
read around this question, the more I saw patterns emerging.
The first and major tactic that I discovered in their attack on me was
their reliance on lies -- just straight-up lies. Theres no other way
to describe it, just telling lies. Many of the categories that I will
enumerate overlap, and many of them could also come under this general
rubric of telling lies. But I think that if one had to isolate a
single tactic, it was a tactic of telling lies. I think theyve
elevated telling lies to a very high artistic form. [Laughter]. For
example, very early in my controversy, the major Jewish organizations
became involved. And this is very fascinating. Here am I, a professor
in a very small college, teaching a class of maybe 30 students, but
they attached such great importance to this, that within a very short
space of time the major Jewish organizations became involved, and it
became a national event. For example, one Sunday morning on the ABC
network television program This Week With David Brinkley, there was
a whole segment dealing with this question -- about my telling my
students that Jews were involved in the slave trade.
Up to that point I was still a little astounded, considering the
prominence given to what, to me, was a totally inconsequential thing.
Shortly after all of this started, four of the major Jewish
organizations issued a joint press release attacking me: the
Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, the American
Jewish Congress, and the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater
Boston. Afterwards they said that this was somewhat unprecedented for
these major Jewish organizations to combine their efforts to attack
one little obscure professor at a small school. They also admitted
that it was unusual to issue this press release in the middle of one
of their high holy days -- of which there are quite a few, I
understand -- to sort of disturb the sanctity of this high holiday by
issuing something along these lines.
Now, I actually saw one of the original press releases, which I have
likened to a medieval scroll. It reminded me of a movie I saw as a
boy, with Robin Hood, in which the Sheriff of Nottingham went into
Sherwood Forest [laughter], and he would unroll a long proclamation
and tack it on a tree, saying Robin Hood, beware. Were looking for
you. That kind of a thing. [laughter]. This was literally a scroll.
You couldnt read it without having to unroll it. Ive never seen
anything like it. It had the logos of these four organizations. And
this opened my eyes to the proclivity of these folks to tell lies.
This proclamation told the world that I was refusing to let my
students discuss this information. First of all, it presented me as
providing wrong information -- blatantly false information, as another
Jewish person described it to my classroom. And it said that in the
classroom I was apparently ramming this stuff down my students
throats, and forbidding any discussion -- a claim that was absolutely,
hideously untrue. It said that I had a history of all kinds of
problems with my school, and that my colleagues had been complaining
about me for many years. Up to now I have had no inkling of what these
complaints could possibly be. I know of no such incidents, certainly
not before this time.
I was able to take this press release and read it out to my class. It
was a very good learning experience for the students, because here
were the students who I was accused of misleading and whatnot, and I
was able to show them the kind of information that gets into the major
media. One of the interesting lies that came out around this time was
by the campus rabbi. She came into my office -- yes this was a she,
actually -- complaining about my teaching this information. So I told
her: Well look, if you think this information is false, why dont you
come to my class? I will invite you to my classroom. I will allow you
to stand up in front of my class and explain whats wrong with this
information, and then we can have a debate in front of the class. And
she agreed. But of course she quickly changed her mind. And not only
did she change her mind, but then she put it out that I had refused to
discuss the material with her. [laughter].
So point number one is the proclivity to tell lies. Point number two
was a very interesting proclivity towards attempting to damage ones
professional credibility. There was a tendency to libel and slander
whoever they were upset with. In this case it was me. There was one
Jewish gentleman, about 50 years old, who began making anonymous
calls, random calls, to the campus. He would call the dorms, he would
call peoples offices, just randomly. And he would tell them he was a
Jewish student at Harvard University. He would tell them that he had
discovered that I did not really have a PhD, and that I was not
qualified to be teaching at Wellesley College. This was one of the
more bizarre examples of the attempt to discredit me professionally.
There was a gentleman who I subsequently brought a libel case against,
and lost. I brought three cases, but lost them all. This gentleman
suggested that I was an affirmative action PhD, and that the only
reason I got a PhD was because of affirmative action. He said the only
reason I got tenure at Wellesley College -- I was one of the youngest
professors ever tenured there -- was because they were afraid of me. I
was portrayed as this great, black, loudmouthed person, so just to
keep me quiet they decided to give me tenure. [laughter].
One of the most interesting of these efforts to discredit me was by a
gentleman called Leon Wieseltier, who describes himself as a literary
editor of the New Republic magazine. Now in 1994, I think it was, at
the height of all this hysteria, The Washington Post Book World
invited me to review four new books for an issue, which I did. They
gave my review a lot of space. It was the longest book review in that
issue.
And in the very next weeks issue, there were, predictably, two or
three outraged letters from Jewish individuals asking The Washington
Post Book World if had been aware of who this person was -- the great
anti-Semite Tony Martin. Dont you know who this is? [laughter] How
can you let him write in this prestigious periodical? And this guy
Wieseltier went a step further. The title of my book is The Jewish
Onslaught, and the subtitle is Despatches from the Wellesley
Battlefront. Now, I spell despatches d-e-s. Most Americans spell it
d-i-s. I grew up in a British tradition, in a British colony, and to
this day I spell honor h-o-n-o-u-r. Most of you do not. The e in
despatches is a British spelling. And this idiot [laughter]
obviously didnt realize that there are alternative spellings of the
word. Again, so anxious to try to discredit someone they disagree
with, this guy actually told The Washington Post Book World in his
letter that I was so ignorant and stupid that I couldnt even spell
the word despatches. [laughter]. Look at how stupid I was, who had
been allowed to publish in their journal. Luckily for me, the editor
of The Washington Post Book World was one of those rare persons who
was apparently not too cowed by the Jewish onslaught. And she wrote a
very nice rejoinder telling Wieseltier that she had checked two
dictionaries, and in both of them she saw despatches -- spelled with
an e -- as one of the optional spellings of the word. [Applause]
Then there was Mary Lefkowitz, one of my colleagues at Wellesley
College. In a little literary magazine Id never seen before. she
actually alleged that I had pushed, had physically assaulted, a white
student. Now, I teach at a womens college. So, here she is playing
into, I guess, all these perceptions of a big, black rapist or
whatever. But she actually alleged that I physically pushed down a
white student. This would be a white woman, and the woman fell down.
Then, she said, I bent over her and raged. That was the word she used:
I bent over her and raged. One had a vision of a raging animal.
[laughter]. So of course I brought a libel suit against her.
And one of the things I discovered was that these folks are very, very
well positioned in the court system. In fact, after having lost, well,
I guess, two libel suits, I was beginning to think they must have had
something to do with fashioning the libel laws in this country.
[laughter]. Because in this case, you know, Lefkowitz actually
acknowledged that what she said was wrong, and she acknowledged that
she had not taken due care in ascertaining the facts. But even those
acknowledgements were not enough for me to win the case. I had to
prove that she had acted with reckless abandon, and all kinds of
things. But it was a very interesting learning experience for me. The
way libel laws work in this country, once they identify you as a
public person, anyone basically has carte blanche. A person can say
anything he wants. It can be true. It can be false. He doesnt have to
do research. He can say anything he wants. Its almost literally that
bad.
So, those are some of the efforts that were made to discredit me. Of
course, I dont think they succeeded. But again, this was a very
persistent effort to sort of tarnish my image. And very much aligned
with this, of course, was the generalized question of character
assassination. This was part of that effort to damage ones
credibility.
There was also the tactic of what I describe as dirty tricks. Of
course, this too is a subset within the general rubric of lies, I
suppose. At Wellesley College there is a Hillel group. Hillel is the
Jewish student organization that exists on campuses around the
country. I remember reading in Paul Findleys book, They Dare To Speak
Out, that the Hillel people are formally trained, apparently by the
ADL and other organizations, in tactics: how to disrupt meetings, how
to push false propaganda on campuses, and so on. And even though I
dont know it for a fact, certainly those Hillel students who were
part of the campaign did appear to be professionally trained.
In fact, the whole campaign against me was initiated by students from
the Hillel group. They sat in on my class on the first day of the
semester, just for one day. And somehow from that one days class they
somehow figured out that I was teaching this book as fact. Apparently
they figured that if I was teaching the book as hate literature,
quote unquote, that would be okay. But the fact that I was teaching
the book just as any other book, as one having some basic academic
credibility -- they considered that, of course, to be a grossly
anti-Semitic thing. And they were the ones who raised the hue and cry.
Theres a group on campus called The Friends of Wellesley Hillel.
This is a group of faculty and alumni who work very closely with the
Hillel students. In the midst of this campaign they actually put
together a packet of mostly libelous information, and mailed it to the
mother of one of the students who was very, very vocal on my behalf.
The students rallied around me. Its quite incredible the extent to
which these folks would operate. This is a group of grown people, such
as deans of the college, professors, who take the time to sit on
committees to put together a packet of basically lies and
misinformation, and send it out. They actually targeted this one
student because she was a leader of the students who were supporting
me, and they sent this information to her mother.
Somebody came and tacked up a flyer around my office one day -- I
wasnt in the office at the time alleging sexual misconduct between
myself and this same student who was vocal on my behalf. Fortunately
for me, it didnt work. And at one point they started a rumor that if
I wrote recommendations for those students, they would not get jobs
and would not get entry into graduate school, or anything. These are
some of what I call dirty tricks.
There was also the tactic of what I call going for the economic
jugular -- to remove my ability to survive economically. An example
of that was a joint press release that called for my expulsion from
the college. It called for my tenure to be revoked. So again, thats
one of the hallmarks of their tactics, it seems to me. And I am sure
that this is of wider application than in just my own case.
There was also the tactic of what I call Great Presumptuousness. I
heard somebody last night mention the word chutzpah. I call it
presumptuousness -- the idea that a rabbi, a student chaplain, could
come into my office to demand an explanation for why am I teaching
this information. That to me is sheer presumptuousness. Even though I
was polite, the essence of my response was, basically, Who the hell
are you to come here to tell me what I must teach [laughter] in a
black studies class. Im an expert on black studies. Who the hell are
you? I didnt say it in those terms, but that was the import
[applause] of what I was saying.
Before this Jewish onslaught began with me, just by sheer coincidence
a few months earlier, I had been doing some research in a Jewish
archive in New York City, and at that time a case similar to mine had
just erupted concerning Professor Leonard Jeffries at City College in
New York City. He had made a speech in Albany in which he had pointed
out that Jews had a very large hand in fashioning Hollywood. In fact,
theres a book by a Jewish author, Neil Gabler, called An Empire of
Their Own. And the subtitle, interestingly enough, is How the Jews
Invented Hollywood. [Laughter]. What could be more explicit than
that? The author is boasting about the way Jews basically shaped
American popular culture.
So Len Jeffries, in his speech in Albany, had said Well, okay, so you
all [Jews] invented American popular culture. You therefore have to
take a large portion of the blame for the negative stereotypes
concerning black folk that have been nurtured by Hollywood over the
years. But of course they want to have their cake and eat it, too.
They want to invent Hollywood, but they dont want to take
responsibility for the negative elements coming out of Hollywood. So
Jeffries was branded as anti-Semitic, as usual, for having said that.
So at that time, when I was visiting the Jewish archive, my own case
had not yet emerged. But they tried to put me through this litmus
test. It was almost as though they would not let me use the archives
unless I disavowed any kind of association with Jeffries. The woman in
charge asked me: Do you know Len Jeffries? I said Yes, I know him.
Hes a good friend of mine, a colleague of mine. And she was very
upset.
Again theres this presumptuousness, this feeling that they have a
right to put you through all these litmus tests -- a right to demand
of you why you are doing something that, to anybody else, is totally
correct, and totally inoffensive.
Another tactic which I think I can distill out of my experience is a
tendency to sidestep the real issues. I discovered that throughout
this whole period of almost ten years now, they would almost never
engage me on the facts of the matter. They would say: Okay, you say
that Jews were involved in the slave trade. Youre a big anti-Semite.
So Ill say: Okay, lets discuss it. Were Jews indeed half of the
slave owners in Brazil in the 17th century? Ill say, look at your own
Encyclopaedia Judaica. It says that Jews were half the slave owners in
Brazil. But they would never engage in that kind of factual debate.
Never. They would always go off on a tangent, trying to besmirch your
character, trying to take away your economic wherewithal, and so on.
But they studiously avoid ever engaging in a discussion of the actual
facts of the matter.
I had a graphic illustration of this just a few weeks ago when this
question flared again, very briefly, on my campus. Somebody mentioned
that ten years ago I had taught these [allegedly] blatant falsehoods,
and whatnot. So I responded in the newspaper. And a couple of Jewish
students wrote back, responding to me. And again, although I laid out
several examples of Jewish historians acknowledging the Jewish
involvement in the slave trade, there was no reference to this at all
by the Jewish students. Instead, they began talking about stories from
Europe in the Middle Ages, or some other era, about Jews killing white
kids to take their blood and put it in matzos, and stories of their
Jewish holocaust. In short, all kinds of stuff that had nothing to do
with anything. In fact, I responded asking them what any of this has
to do with the point that I was making. They did not read my article.
They did not acknowledge the evidence I had given concerning Jewish
involvement in the slave trade. What do stories of Jews killing
somebody for their blood to put in matzos have to do the slave trade?
But this was always their tendency. They would studiously avoid the
facts and avoid the issue at hand, but instead bring in what we call
Red Herrings -- off the wall stuff. And this was a very persistent
tactic, which Ive been able to discern.
Another tactic -- which may be just saying the same thing in a
different way -- is the tendency to introduce straw men. For
example, Im discussing Jewish involvement in the slave trade, but
somebody responds by writing an article saying that I alleged which
is not true that Jews were genetically predisposed towards enslaving
others. This has nothing to do with anything that I was talking about.
But again, they would totally disregard the facts of the case and
introduce something totally different. They would introduce a straw
man, get it on the record, and then they would attack the straw man
theyve created. And because they have such great influence in the
media, this straw man, this false information, all of a sudden
becomes part of the record. Even in court theyll reference the same
lies that they put in the newspaper, as though this is some
disinterested source, some third party. And then this brings me to my
next point -- their ability to plant misinformation in the record, and
then use that misinformation as though its some kind of
well-documented, primary source.
Point number ten. This is what I call the use of quislings or
surrogates, or what we in the black community call Uncle Toms. They
have developed this art to a very high level -- at least in my case,
or in the black community. Ive mentioned Henry Louis Skip Gates.
There are many other notorious figures like that in the black
community, who are all too willing to do their bidding. I must say
that these folks are very, very well recompensed. These folks have
been given incredible prominence. They go around the world speaking,
sometimes for fifteen thousand dollars at a time. Those are the kind
of honorariums these folks get. Theyve been given endowed chairs in
their universities. Many of them can hardly put two sentences
together. But because theyve been willing to play this game, theyve
been elevated to prominence. When you pick up The New York Times,
youll see them on the cover of the Sunday magazine section with
regard to issues that pertain to black folk. And it doesnt matter
what it is specifically. It can be the history of Africa. It can be
contemporary politics in the Caribbean. It doesnt matter. They are
quoted as the authorities, and so on. Youll also see them on PBS
television, on multi-million dollar programs and documentaries, and so
on. And this has been a very effective tactic on their part; to pick
out people from within, in this case, my own group -- that is, people
who are willing to, in a sense, sell themselves for the admittedly
very ample rewards theyre given as a result.
Another tactic is their ability to leverage off of the influence which
they undoubtedly have in high places. At Wellesley College, for
example, a new president was coming on just as my case was moving to
its climax, so to speak. And this new college president came in not
knowing anything about what had been happening. And somehow these
folks got her to write a letter, which I suspect they must have
drafted themselves because she had no real knowledge of the background
of what was happening. This was a letter condemning me for teaching
that Jews were involved in the slave trade. This letter, according to
newspaper reports, was sent out to maybe 40 to 60 thousand people. So
you had the incoming president of Wellesley College sending out 40 to
60 thousand letters. This must be unprecedented in the annals of
American higher education, I think. This is something for the Guinness
Book of World Records [Laughter]. A university president sending out
as many as 60, thats six-zero, thousand letters, condemning one of
her own professors for teaching something that is historically true.
Ive never, ever heard of such a case. Maybe I should indeed write to
the Guinness Book of World Records and see if they can immortalize me
by mentioning this.
Then there was the American Historical Association. Three Jewish
historians actually went to the American Historical Association and
got it to decree thats the only term I can use to decree, by
executive fiat, that the Jews were not involved in the slave trade.
[Laughter] Ive never ever heard of any such thing. This is totally
antithetical to the way that academia operates. Whos ever heard of
such a thing: historical fact being determined by presidential decree
from the American Historical Association. We decree [mocking]. Its
like a Papal Bull in the Middle Ages We decree: The Jews were not
involved in the slave trade. [Laughter] It is absolutely amazing, but
they actually succeeded in having this done.
Then theres one of the most amazing cases of all. I was invited to
speak in the city of Worcester, Massachusetts, by Worcester State
College, round about 1994 or 95. And the Jewish groups were actually
able to get the mayor of Worcester one of the largest cities in the
state to call together a special press conference, in which he had
leaders of all the major religions. He had a Roman Catholic head. He
had a Baptist head -- heads of various Protestant denominations -- and
rabbis, ADL types, and so on. The mayor assembled an entire coalition
of religious and apparently civil rights organizations. For what? To
denounce me prior to my appearance at Worcester State College. They
had already tried to put pressure on the college, and on the people
whod invited me. To their great credit, those people stayed strong.
They refused to bow, and I spoke. You would think that the mayor had
more important things to do. [Laughter]. But here these groups were
powerful enough to get the mayor of a major city to pull together a
special conclave on a Jewish press release to denounce me.
Of course, the result was that my speech, when indeed it did take
place, drew the largest audience in the history of the school.
[Laughter and applause] Actually, I didnt originally include this in
my talk, but I really should mention their tendency on occasion to
shoot themselves in the foot. [laughter] If they had left me alone, I
think the only people who would have known of the Jewish involvement
in the slave trade would have been my 30 students and myself.
[Laughter, applause]. But now, of course, the whole world knows about
it. And, as a result, the question of African slavery will never ever
again be raised without the question of the Jewish role being part of
the discussion. Its now in the forefront of peoples consciousness.
And thats due to them. I mean, I never could have promoted this idea
the way that they did. [Laughter].
Another tactic, of course, is their use of the major media. They
become very agitated when one speaks of their control of the media.
Thats one of the worst anti-Semitic things its possible for anybody
to say. And yet, as in the case of the Jewish involvement in
Hollywood, they themselves boast about their prominence in the media.
In fact, in my book, The Jewish Onslaught, I quote Charles Silberman,
a Jewish author, who wrote a book in the 1980s called A Certain
People. And in it he boasts that of the seven top editors of The New
York Times, all seven were Jews. He wrote about the major TV networks,
and although I forget the precise figure, he mentions that the
majority of the senior television network producers were Jews, and
that its these producers who really determine what gets on the news,
what stays out, what spin is put on information, and so on. So the
people who are crucial to spinning the news, he wrote, are primarily
Jews. He named names. And I quoted him in my book. But I was
anti-Semitic for quoting him [laughter], which was not unusual.
When that huge scroll, that press-release scroll, was issued by the
four major Jewish organizations, the Boston Globe, the citys leading
newspaper, published four major articles, including editorials and op
eds, within about six days, attacking me on that question. That
included an op ed in the Sunday paper and a major editorial on the
editorial page. Again, these were filled with lies and distortions. I
responded with a letter, which they refused to publish. So they had
four major items attacking me in less than a week, but they refused to
publish my rejoinder. And so, because these folks have such a sway
over the major media, it gives them a very great advantage.
I remember being interviewed for the Fox front page program. They
interviewed me for over an hour, but I guess that my responses to
their questions were so tight that they could not find any sound bite
to extract to make me look bad. So they gave me a couple sound bites,
maybe half a second each, but instead of letting me talk, they had a
narrator of some kind who spent about five minutes telling folks what
I had said, but not letting me say anything, practically. And that,
too, is one of their tactics.
The use of organizations is another tactic. Of course, I dont have to
tell this audience about the Anti-Defamation League. I think I also
have pride of place on the ADL website. Although I havent checked
recently, for several years I had Honorable Mention every year in
their listing of anti-Semitic occurrences, and so on. In their listing
of anti-Semitic occurrences of the previous year, there would be an
item like, Tony Martin gave a lecture at XYZ college. That would in
itself be cited as an anti-Semitic event -- the fact that I gave a
lecture someplace. The ADL actually issued a book about me. And
although Ive had it for years, I havent got around to reading it.
They took the title of my book and turned it around. This ADL report
is titled Academic Bigotry: Professor Tony Martin's Anti-Jewish
Onslaught.
Another tactic is what I call their unseemly histrionics. When I spoke
at Worcester State College, there was a Jewish lady (I think her name
was Schneider) who was on the Colleges board of trustees. Amidst
great fanfare, she resigned from the board because of the schools
invitation to me. But thats what I call nothing but stupid
histrionics. It got a lot of press, of course. It created a lot of
media interest. But again, this was a case of shooting herself in the
foot. As I remember they had initially scheduled me to speak in an
auditorium that held about a hundred people. But after all the
hysteria, which they themselves had generated, they had to change the
venue to the largest auditorium they had, which held about 300 people.
And even that wasnt big enough. So eventually, when I turned up on a
cold, wintry morning in February, they had that 300-capacity
auditorium totally full. Then they had to run closed-circuit
televisions outside for another 300 people to hear what I had to say.
And of course, my speech got to be front-page news the next morning in
the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, and so on.
Another thing they try to do is to pin what I call a nickname on you.
They try to find some little slip of the tongue, or some little thing
they can take out of context. And if they find it, then every time
your name is mentioned in the media, they stick that on you. For
example, Minister Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam once made a
slip. He was talking about a fact, as I mentioned earlier, that 75
percent of Jewish households in 1830 owned slaves. But he kind of got
it wrong, as one often does in the midst of a speech -- a slip of the
tongue. And it came out, when he said it, that Jews owned 75 percent
of the slaves. It was obviously a slip of the tongue. But they
mentioned it repeatedly ever since, often using that sound bite to
make it look like he was a great distorter of the truth.
In my case, fortunately for me, the most they could pin on me was the
term controversial. So every time they mention me, I get to be the
controversial professor. [Laughter]. Theyre also very good at the
good cop/bad cop game. While someone is trying to destroy you on one
side, someone will come on the other side, all smiley and whatnot. But
beware of the good cop. Very often its better to deal with the bad
cop because the good one will often get you in jail much more quickly
and smoothly than the bad one.
And sometimes they try to play you for a fool. At the same time
theyre trying to destroy you, theyre trying to give you advice.
[laughter] Last year, for example, when I decided to accept David
Irvings invitation to speak in Cincinnati, there was guy whose name I
dont recall who sent me an e-mail telling me what a racist David
Irving was. He sent me this copy of some poem that Irving had written,
saying he didnt want his daughter to marry a Rastafarian or something
-- which is neither here nor there as far as Im concerned. If he
wants he wants his daughter to marry a Rastafarian or anybody else, or
not marry them, So what? That has nothing to do with anything as far
as Im concerned. But again, here are people who are trying to destroy
me, people who have spent the last ten years trying to portray me as
all kinds of things, trying to take my livelihood away. and these same
people can have the chutzpah, I guess, to warn me against somebody
else. The whole idea is just totally amazing to me. Of course, I
didnt pay any great attention to what these guys are trying to say.
Another one of their tactics is hate mail. Their propensity for hate
mail, I discovered, is absolutely amazing. Up to now, I still get a
lot of hate emails. And a few days ago I got a hate postcard. On the
one hand they try to portray themselves in public as these great
liberals and nice folks and whatnot, but at the very same time theyre
getting out this other kind of stuff.
Which also reminds me of the tendency towards violence. There was one
Jewish guy, he said he was a Russian Jew, called Alexander Nechaevsky,
who actually came onto my campus saying that he had come to get me.
Luckily I wasnt there to be gotten that day. I was somewhere out of
town. But he came to the office, saying he had come to get me, and
whatnot. They had to call the campus police, and he was given an order
-- a trespass order, I think they called it -- not to appear on the
campus again.
So these, then, are some of the kinds of tactics that Ive been able
to distill from my interaction with these folks over the last nine or
ten years. Again, Ive been very fascinated by the fact that Ive
become more broadly aware of similar situations involving others so
that, it seems to me, many of these tactics may be of much more
generalized application.
I dont necessarily know the best way to respond. But I can just maybe
outline, very quickly, the ways that I have tried to respond. I have
tried to respond, first of all, by trying to stand on principle. From
the very beginning, as far as Im concerned, Im talking the truth.
Ive said that the Jews were indeed involved in the slave trade. And
as long as I am convinced in my own mind that Im talking the truth,
then thats it. Ive tried to disregard all of the other foolishness,
and Ive tried to stand on the truth. Ive been on TV many times,
debating people from the American Jewish Committee, and so on. And
again, in such face to face debate, all of these tactics come into
play. They try to attack your credibility, your character. But what
Ive always tried to do in those exchanges is to ignore, as far as I
can, all of the ad hominem attacks, and concentrate on the facts. So
theyll say Tony Martin is an anti-Semite. Ill just ignore it. Ill
say, 75 percent of Jewish households owned slaves, according to the
1830 census. Ill stick to the facts, and Ill use those kinds of
media appearances as an opportunity to inform whoever happens to be
listening.
Ive also tried , where I could, to myself leverage off of their media
power. There have been times when they have unwittingly given me an
opportunity to appear before the mass media, and Ive used those
opportunities to the hilt -- again, to push facts. I know in advance
that I have only 30 seconds, so I try to ram as many facts into those
30 seconds as I can, and just forget all the anti-Semitic stuff. I can
deal with that later.
Ive also tried to develop, to the best of my limited resources, some
kind of independent response. I find that independence is a very, very
great benefit. I started my own little publishing company. Its a
little company, but it was very, very effective. My book, The Jewish
Onslaught got out and sold like hotcakes. Its really made a
difference, just to have some kind of an independent medium. It wasnt
a major corporation or anything, but it was independent. I controlled
it, and I was able to fight back to some degree.
I also think its important to have some kind of a support structure.
I was very fortunate. They attacked me at a time when I already had
established a pretty good sort of a support structure in academia. I
was relatively well known. It wasnt as easy for them to destroy my
credibility as it might have been for people who were perhaps less
accomplished. But I found that having a support structure and being
able to avail oneself of it was very important.
And finally, in my case I tried wherever possible to take the matter
to them. I didnt sit back and wait, once the battle was joined. I
found it, in fact. In the early days especially I think that they
werent used to having people fight back the way that I did. I think
it sort of threw them off balance. They came at me with all their
usual bag of tricks, expecting me to fold immediately. But I once I
was able to fight back, and once it began to appear to them that they
had a long protracted struggle on their hands, and not an easy
victory, it took them a while to actually try to regroup and figure
out what to do.
So, I just offer these as perhaps things for folks to think about in
their response. Thank you very much.
This is an edited transcript of Prof. Martins address given in June
2002 in Irvine, California, at the 14th Conference of the Institute
for Historical Review.
About the Author
Tony Martin, a historian, was best known as a specialist of African
American history. For years he served as a professor of Africana
Studies at Wellesley College (Massachusetts).
He was born in 1942 in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. He earned a
B.Sc. honors degree in economics at the University of Hull (England),
and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in history at Michigan State University. He
authored, compiled or edited 14 books. He was perhaps best known for
his work on the life and legacy of the Black Nationalist leader Marcus
Garvey. Martins many articles and reviews appeared in a variety of
academic journals and popular periodicals, as well as in reference
works and anthologies. He was also a popular lecturer, and addressed
general and scholarly audiences across the US, in Canada, and in other
countries. Martin retired in June 2007 as professor emeritus after 34
years with Wellesley Colleges Africana Studies Department. He died in
January 2013 at the age of 70 in Trinidad.
First of all, thank you very much, Greg, for the introduction. Id
like to thank also the IHR and Mark Weber particularly for inviting me
here. Im very happy to be here, to be part of this event. I like
long-winded topics, at least topic titles, so Ill read the topic
which I have selected for today. Its as follows: Jewish Tactics as
Exemplified in the Controversy Over Jewish Involvement in the
Transatlantic Slave Trade. So I wont be speaking that much on the
controversy itself. What Im trying to do is to use my subjective
experience, that is, the experience Ive had, for close to a decade
now, in dealing with this controversy.
And what Im going to try to do now -- to use my concrete, subjective
experience on the firing line, so to speak. And Im going to try to
extract from my experience certain basic sort of tactics that I think
the Jewish lobby has used over the years pertaining to my particular
situation. But in trying to extract these tactics from my own
situation, I suspect that I may very well resonate with the experience
of some other people here, because my suspicion is that there tends to
be a generalized practice which transcends your particular situation.
So, even though in my case I was dealing with a specific situation --
the transatlantic slave trade -- my suspicion is that the kinds of
tactics which were used against me may be not very dissimilar to those
experienced by many other folks who have been involved in other kinds
of disputes with this particular lobby.
The first thing I should do by way of introduction is just to
basically summarize precisely what my controversy was. I know its
familiar to many people here, but Im sure not to everybody in this
audience. As was mentioned a minute ago in the introduction, I teach
at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. For many years Ive taught a
survey course in African-American history. This is a one semester
course, that moves very rapidly over the whole gamut of
African-American history. In 1993 I introduced to this course a book
which is on sale here, a book which then was fairly new, a book which
I myself had only just recently become introduced to. This book, which
is published by the historical research department of the Nation of
Islam, is entitled The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews.
And what that book did, relying primarily on sources written by Jews,
and Jewish sources of a variety of types, is to try to sort of
synthesize the existing information on Jewish involvement in the slave
trade, the bringing of Africans as slaves from Africa to the so-called
new world. There wasnt that much in the book that was new -- all the
information, practically, was secondary information, which had been
already published, although hidden away to a large extent in very
esoteric Jewish journals, which the average Jew, I discovered later,
had no idea about.
Nevertheless, it wasnt new information. It was new to many people,
including myself, and I found it very interesting that even though I
had taught African-American history for many years, I had been only
dimly aware of the role of Jews in that slave trade. What I discovered
was that the Jewish role in that slave trade had been very cleverly
camouflaged for many, many years. Where Jews were involved, usually
they tended not to be identified as Jews, whereas where Christians
were involved, or where Muslims were involved. there was ready
identification of such persons by their ethnicity, by their religious
affiliation, and so on. In the case of Jews, they would be called
other things -- Portuguese, Spanish, Brazilian, whatever. But, you
know, that crucial identification tended to be obscured. So, as a good
professor I think Im a good professor. Im always on the lookout
for new information, to enrich my classes. So I was very fascinated by
this new information, and decided to add a few readings from this book
in my class. And thats when, as the saying goes, all hell broke
loose. [Laughter]
Apparently, I didnt realize it, but I actually stumbled into a
controversy which was already brewing because the book had apparently
caused some consternation in Jewish circles. And its only afterwards,
when I went back and did my research, that I discovered that one or
two editorials had already appeared, by way of the Jewish power
structure, in a sense warning people like myself to stay away from the
book. There already apparently had been a full-page op ed piece in The
New York Times, one that, I was told, was the largest, longest op ed
that had ever been published in that paper. It was actually typeset in
the form of a Star of David. It was written by someone called Henry
Lewis Gates of Harvard University, one of the black spokesmen for the
Jewish lobby. Even the paper from my basic home town, the Boston
Globe, had carried an editorial, which I was unaware of at the time,
not long before I began to use the book. And in a sense, the purpose
of these editorials and op eds was to warn folks to stay away from
that book, or else. But me, in my foolhardiness, ignored the warnings,
being largely unaware of the warnings in the first place. And so I
stumbled into this problem.
In fact Jews had been involved not only in the African slave trade,
but also, and for a very long period of time, in a variety of other
slave trades as well. Apparently, they had actually dominated slavery
and the slave trade in medieval times. A couple of days ago, while on
the plane on the way here, I was re-reading a Ph. D. dissertation from
1977 [The Ebb and Flow of Conflict: A History of Black-Jewish
Relations through 1900] by a man called Harold D. Brackman, who is a
functionary of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. In his dissertation, which
details Black-Jewish relations from ancient times up to 1900, he
actually acknowledges the fact that Jews were the principal slave
traders in the world for several hundred years -- although, and in
typical fashion, he puts a very interesting spin on it. He
acknowledges, as I guess he has to, that Jews were the major slave
traders in the world, trading slaves everywhere from Russia to western
Europe, to India, to China -- but he says that they dominated the
world trade only for a few hundred years -- only. [laughter] He said
that they were the main slave traders from the eighth century to the
twelfth century -- but that was no big thing. It was only a few
hundred years.
I discovered also that the Jews were very instrumental in the
ideological underpinning for the African slave trade -- the notorious
Hamitic myth -- which more than anything else has provided a sort of
ideological underpinning or rationale for the slave trade. This comes
out of the Talmud. In fact, Harold Brackman himself acknowledges that
this was the first explication of the story in the Biblical book of
Genesis about Ham, the so-called progenitor of the African race,
having been cursed by Noah, and so on. But apparently, according to
Brackman, the Talmud was the first place that put a racist spin on
this story. The Biblical story was racially neutral, but the Talmud
apparently put a very awful racist spin on this story, which later on
became the basis, the ideological underpinning, for the African slave
trade. So all of this I was to discover as I became embroiled in the
controversy.
One of the things that interested me, too, was that the Jewish element
was apparently also a major element in what came to be known in the 19
th century as the white slave trade. The white slave trade was a major
multinational, international trading in women for immoral sexual
purposes, as prostitutes, and so on. And I found, too, that Jewish
entrepreneurs in Europe apparently were also major figures in that
so-called slave trade.
So I became aware of all of this. Just to summarize briefly what I
discovered in the book, The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and
Jews, and in the subsequent readings, with regard to the African slave
trade, is that once it got going in the 15th century, the Jews again
were a very important part of it. The book was not suggesting, just I
have never suggested, that the Jews were the only people involved, or
even the major people involved. My basic point has always been that
whereas everybody else that Im aware of who was a part of the slave
trade has acknowledged being part of it. In fact, many of the people
who were a part of the genesis of the slave trade later also became
part of the abolitionist movement to end the trade. But as far as I
know, the Jewish element is the only one that has resisted
acknowledging its participation in this trade. In fact, it has gone
beyond merely resisting knowledge of this information coming out. It
has become very upset when this information has come to the fore.
And that has been my basic problem. Why? Whats so special about this
group that places itself beyond the pale, so to speak -- no pun
intended -- beyond the pale of criticism. And whereas any other group
can be criticized, this group -- it seems to me -- is beyond
criticism. Especially for me as a black person, I become very upset if
someone tries to walk into my classroom to tell me that I, as a black
person teaching black history, have to sort of regard their
involvement in my history as somehow out of bounds.
So, after becoming involved in this history, via the Hamitic myth,
Jews were some of the important financiers of this slave trade in the
very early periods. One of the major multi-national corporations that
financed the Atlantic slave trade very early on was the Dutch West
India Company. As we know, the Jews had been chased out of Spain, and
chased out of Portugal. The Netherlands was the one area which
welcomed them to some degree. And this was right around the same time,
the 15th century, that the slave trade was gearing up -- so they were
positioned, geographically and in other ways, to become an important
element in the financing of the Dutch West India Company, a major
multinational corporation that was involved in the slave trade.
In the early 17th century Jews were, in fact, a major element in the
slave trade in places like Brazil and Surinam in South America, in
places like Curacao in the West Indies, and in Jamaica, Barbados and
other places. I discovered that they were also very well positioned in
this country -- that many of the traders in colonial times who brought
slaves across the Atlantic to this country were in fact Jewish
ship-owners and slave traders. Some of the best known names in
colonial North America who were involved in that traffic were people
like Aaron Lopez of Newport, Rhode Island, who was one of the
best-known names of all.
I discovered that Jews owned many of the ancillary corporations that
sort of fed into the slave trade. For example, rum distilling was a
major business that was ancillary to the slave trade because rum was
used as an item of trade, to exchange for slaves in West Africa. And
most of the rum distilleries in places like Boston and elsewhere in
New England were, I believe, owned by Jews, and so on.
I discovered that according to the 1830 census, even though Jews were
a small proportion of the population in North America, nevertheless
they were inordinately represented among the slave owners. Yes, they
were a small portion of the population overall, but on a percentage
basis that were significant. Jewish historians who have analyzed the
1830 census have discovered that whereas something like 30-odd percent
of the white population may have owned one or more slaves in the
South, for Jewish households it was over 70 percent. So according to
an analysis of the 1830 census by Jewish historians, Jews were more
than twice as likely, on a percentage basis, to own slaves.
I also discovered that Jews, despite their involvement in the slave
trade, were very few and far between in the abolitionist movement.
They were much, much less likely than other groups to be involved in
this movement. So that in a nutshell, then, is the set of facts that
caused me to become involved in this interesting controversy. And what
I want to do, then, is to dwell not on the facts themselves, but on
what I perceive to be the main tactics that were used, because I found
myself, like I said, on the front line of this situation, and I became
very fascinated, looking at their tactics. And the more I began to
read around this question, the more I saw patterns emerging.
The first and major tactic that I discovered in their attack on me was
their reliance on lies -- just straight-up lies. Theres no other way
to describe it, just telling lies. Many of the categories that I will
enumerate overlap, and many of them could also come under this general
rubric of telling lies. But I think that if one had to isolate a
single tactic, it was a tactic of telling lies. I think theyve
elevated telling lies to a very high artistic form. [Laughter]. For
example, very early in my controversy, the major Jewish organizations
became involved. And this is very fascinating. Here am I, a professor
in a very small college, teaching a class of maybe 30 students, but
they attached such great importance to this, that within a very short
space of time the major Jewish organizations became involved, and it
became a national event. For example, one Sunday morning on the ABC
network television program This Week With David Brinkley, there was
a whole segment dealing with this question -- about my telling my
students that Jews were involved in the slave trade.
Up to that point I was still a little astounded, considering the
prominence given to what, to me, was a totally inconsequential thing.
Shortly after all of this started, four of the major Jewish
organizations issued a joint press release attacking me: the
Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, the American
Jewish Congress, and the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater
Boston. Afterwards they said that this was somewhat unprecedented for
these major Jewish organizations to combine their efforts to attack
one little obscure professor at a small school. They also admitted
that it was unusual to issue this press release in the middle of one
of their high holy days -- of which there are quite a few, I
understand -- to sort of disturb the sanctity of this high holiday by
issuing something along these lines.
Now, I actually saw one of the original press releases, which I have
likened to a medieval scroll. It reminded me of a movie I saw as a
boy, with Robin Hood, in which the Sheriff of Nottingham went into
Sherwood Forest [laughter], and he would unroll a long proclamation
and tack it on a tree, saying Robin Hood, beware. Were looking for
you. That kind of a thing. [laughter]. This was literally a scroll.
You couldnt read it without having to unroll it. Ive never seen
anything like it. It had the logos of these four organizations. And
this opened my eyes to the proclivity of these folks to tell lies.
This proclamation told the world that I was refusing to let my
students discuss this information. First of all, it presented me as
providing wrong information -- blatantly false information, as another
Jewish person described it to my classroom. And it said that in the
classroom I was apparently ramming this stuff down my students
throats, and forbidding any discussion -- a claim that was absolutely,
hideously untrue. It said that I had a history of all kinds of
problems with my school, and that my colleagues had been complaining
about me for many years. Up to now I have had no inkling of what these
complaints could possibly be. I know of no such incidents, certainly
not before this time.
I was able to take this press release and read it out to my class. It
was a very good learning experience for the students, because here
were the students who I was accused of misleading and whatnot, and I
was able to show them the kind of information that gets into the major
media. One of the interesting lies that came out around this time was
by the campus rabbi. She came into my office -- yes this was a she,
actually -- complaining about my teaching this information. So I told
her: Well look, if you think this information is false, why dont you
come to my class? I will invite you to my classroom. I will allow you
to stand up in front of my class and explain whats wrong with this
information, and then we can have a debate in front of the class. And
she agreed. But of course she quickly changed her mind. And not only
did she change her mind, but then she put it out that I had refused to
discuss the material with her. [laughter].
So point number one is the proclivity to tell lies. Point number two
was a very interesting proclivity towards attempting to damage ones
professional credibility. There was a tendency to libel and slander
whoever they were upset with. In this case it was me. There was one
Jewish gentleman, about 50 years old, who began making anonymous
calls, random calls, to the campus. He would call the dorms, he would
call peoples offices, just randomly. And he would tell them he was a
Jewish student at Harvard University. He would tell them that he had
discovered that I did not really have a PhD, and that I was not
qualified to be teaching at Wellesley College. This was one of the
more bizarre examples of the attempt to discredit me professionally.
There was a gentleman who I subsequently brought a libel case against,
and lost. I brought three cases, but lost them all. This gentleman
suggested that I was an affirmative action PhD, and that the only
reason I got a PhD was because of affirmative action. He said the only
reason I got tenure at Wellesley College -- I was one of the youngest
professors ever tenured there -- was because they were afraid of me. I
was portrayed as this great, black, loudmouthed person, so just to
keep me quiet they decided to give me tenure. [laughter].
One of the most interesting of these efforts to discredit me was by a
gentleman called Leon Wieseltier, who describes himself as a literary
editor of the New Republic magazine. Now in 1994, I think it was, at
the height of all this hysteria, The Washington Post Book World
invited me to review four new books for an issue, which I did. They
gave my review a lot of space. It was the longest book review in that
issue.
And in the very next weeks issue, there were, predictably, two or
three outraged letters from Jewish individuals asking The Washington
Post Book World if had been aware of who this person was -- the great
anti-Semite Tony Martin. Dont you know who this is? [laughter] How
can you let him write in this prestigious periodical? And this guy
Wieseltier went a step further. The title of my book is The Jewish
Onslaught, and the subtitle is Despatches from the Wellesley
Battlefront. Now, I spell despatches d-e-s. Most Americans spell it
d-i-s. I grew up in a British tradition, in a British colony, and to
this day I spell honor h-o-n-o-u-r. Most of you do not. The e in
despatches is a British spelling. And this idiot [laughter]
obviously didnt realize that there are alternative spellings of the
word. Again, so anxious to try to discredit someone they disagree
with, this guy actually told The Washington Post Book World in his
letter that I was so ignorant and stupid that I couldnt even spell
the word despatches. [laughter]. Look at how stupid I was, who had
been allowed to publish in their journal. Luckily for me, the editor
of The Washington Post Book World was one of those rare persons who
was apparently not too cowed by the Jewish onslaught. And she wrote a
very nice rejoinder telling Wieseltier that she had checked two
dictionaries, and in both of them she saw despatches -- spelled with
an e -- as one of the optional spellings of the word. [Applause]
Then there was Mary Lefkowitz, one of my colleagues at Wellesley
College. In a little literary magazine Id never seen before. she
actually alleged that I had pushed, had physically assaulted, a white
student. Now, I teach at a womens college. So, here she is playing
into, I guess, all these perceptions of a big, black rapist or
whatever. But she actually alleged that I physically pushed down a
white student. This would be a white woman, and the woman fell down.
Then, she said, I bent over her and raged. That was the word she used:
I bent over her and raged. One had a vision of a raging animal.
[laughter]. So of course I brought a libel suit against her.
And one of the things I discovered was that these folks are very, very
well positioned in the court system. In fact, after having lost, well,
I guess, two libel suits, I was beginning to think they must have had
something to do with fashioning the libel laws in this country.
[laughter]. Because in this case, you know, Lefkowitz actually
acknowledged that what she said was wrong, and she acknowledged that
she had not taken due care in ascertaining the facts. But even those
acknowledgements were not enough for me to win the case. I had to
prove that she had acted with reckless abandon, and all kinds of
things. But it was a very interesting learning experience for me. The
way libel laws work in this country, once they identify you as a
public person, anyone basically has carte blanche. A person can say
anything he wants. It can be true. It can be false. He doesnt have to
do research. He can say anything he wants. Its almost literally that
bad.
So, those are some of the efforts that were made to discredit me. Of
course, I dont think they succeeded. But again, this was a very
persistent effort to sort of tarnish my image. And very much aligned
with this, of course, was the generalized question of character
assassination. This was part of that effort to damage ones
credibility.
There was also the tactic of what I describe as dirty tricks. Of
course, this too is a subset within the general rubric of lies, I
suppose. At Wellesley College there is a Hillel group. Hillel is the
Jewish student organization that exists on campuses around the
country. I remember reading in Paul Findleys book, They Dare To Speak
Out, that the Hillel people are formally trained, apparently by the
ADL and other organizations, in tactics: how to disrupt meetings, how
to push false propaganda on campuses, and so on. And even though I
dont know it for a fact, certainly those Hillel students who were
part of the campaign did appear to be professionally trained.
In fact, the whole campaign against me was initiated by students from
the Hillel group. They sat in on my class on the first day of the
semester, just for one day. And somehow from that one days class they
somehow figured out that I was teaching this book as fact. Apparently
they figured that if I was teaching the book as hate literature,
quote unquote, that would be okay. But the fact that I was teaching
the book just as any other book, as one having some basic academic
credibility -- they considered that, of course, to be a grossly
anti-Semitic thing. And they were the ones who raised the hue and cry.
Theres a group on campus called The Friends of Wellesley Hillel.
This is a group of faculty and alumni who work very closely with the
Hillel students. In the midst of this campaign they actually put
together a packet of mostly libelous information, and mailed it to the
mother of one of the students who was very, very vocal on my behalf.
The students rallied around me. Its quite incredible the extent to
which these folks would operate. This is a group of grown people, such
as deans of the college, professors, who take the time to sit on
committees to put together a packet of basically lies and
misinformation, and send it out. They actually targeted this one
student because she was a leader of the students who were supporting
me, and they sent this information to her mother.
Somebody came and tacked up a flyer around my office one day -- I
wasnt in the office at the time alleging sexual misconduct between
myself and this same student who was vocal on my behalf. Fortunately
for me, it didnt work. And at one point they started a rumor that if
I wrote recommendations for those students, they would not get jobs
and would not get entry into graduate school, or anything. These are
some of what I call dirty tricks.
There was also the tactic of what I call going for the economic
jugular -- to remove my ability to survive economically. An example
of that was a joint press release that called for my expulsion from
the college. It called for my tenure to be revoked. So again, thats
one of the hallmarks of their tactics, it seems to me. And I am sure
that this is of wider application than in just my own case.
There was also the tactic of what I call Great Presumptuousness. I
heard somebody last night mention the word chutzpah. I call it
presumptuousness -- the idea that a rabbi, a student chaplain, could
come into my office to demand an explanation for why am I teaching
this information. That to me is sheer presumptuousness. Even though I
was polite, the essence of my response was, basically, Who the hell
are you to come here to tell me what I must teach [laughter] in a
black studies class. Im an expert on black studies. Who the hell are
you? I didnt say it in those terms, but that was the import
[applause] of what I was saying.
Before this Jewish onslaught began with me, just by sheer coincidence
a few months earlier, I had been doing some research in a Jewish
archive in New York City, and at that time a case similar to mine had
just erupted concerning Professor Leonard Jeffries at City College in
New York City. He had made a speech in Albany in which he had pointed
out that Jews had a very large hand in fashioning Hollywood. In fact,
theres a book by a Jewish author, Neil Gabler, called An Empire of
Their Own. And the subtitle, interestingly enough, is How the Jews
Invented Hollywood. [Laughter]. What could be more explicit than
that? The author is boasting about the way Jews basically shaped
American popular culture.
So Len Jeffries, in his speech in Albany, had said Well, okay, so you
all [Jews] invented American popular culture. You therefore have to
take a large portion of the blame for the negative stereotypes
concerning black folk that have been nurtured by Hollywood over the
years. But of course they want to have their cake and eat it, too.
They want to invent Hollywood, but they dont want to take
responsibility for the negative elements coming out of Hollywood. So
Jeffries was branded as anti-Semitic, as usual, for having said that.
So at that time, when I was visiting the Jewish archive, my own case
had not yet emerged. But they tried to put me through this litmus
test. It was almost as though they would not let me use the archives
unless I disavowed any kind of association with Jeffries. The woman in
charge asked me: Do you know Len Jeffries? I said Yes, I know him.
Hes a good friend of mine, a colleague of mine. And she was very
upset.
Again theres this presumptuousness, this feeling that they have a
right to put you through all these litmus tests -- a right to demand
of you why you are doing something that, to anybody else, is totally
correct, and totally inoffensive.
Another tactic which I think I can distill out of my experience is a
tendency to sidestep the real issues. I discovered that throughout
this whole period of almost ten years now, they would almost never
engage me on the facts of the matter. They would say: Okay, you say
that Jews were involved in the slave trade. Youre a big anti-Semite.
So Ill say: Okay, lets discuss it. Were Jews indeed half of the
slave owners in Brazil in the 17th century? Ill say, look at your own
Encyclopaedia Judaica. It says that Jews were half the slave owners in
Brazil. But they would never engage in that kind of factual debate.
Never. They would always go off on a tangent, trying to besmirch your
character, trying to take away your economic wherewithal, and so on.
But they studiously avoid ever engaging in a discussion of the actual
facts of the matter.
I had a graphic illustration of this just a few weeks ago when this
question flared again, very briefly, on my campus. Somebody mentioned
that ten years ago I had taught these [allegedly] blatant falsehoods,
and whatnot. So I responded in the newspaper. And a couple of Jewish
students wrote back, responding to me. And again, although I laid out
several examples of Jewish historians acknowledging the Jewish
involvement in the slave trade, there was no reference to this at all
by the Jewish students. Instead, they began talking about stories from
Europe in the Middle Ages, or some other era, about Jews killing white
kids to take their blood and put it in matzos, and stories of their
Jewish holocaust. In short, all kinds of stuff that had nothing to do
with anything. In fact, I responded asking them what any of this has
to do with the point that I was making. They did not read my article.
They did not acknowledge the evidence I had given concerning Jewish
involvement in the slave trade. What do stories of Jews killing
somebody for their blood to put in matzos have to do the slave trade?
But this was always their tendency. They would studiously avoid the
facts and avoid the issue at hand, but instead bring in what we call
Red Herrings -- off the wall stuff. And this was a very persistent
tactic, which Ive been able to discern.
Another tactic -- which may be just saying the same thing in a
different way -- is the tendency to introduce straw men. For
example, Im discussing Jewish involvement in the slave trade, but
somebody responds by writing an article saying that I alleged which
is not true that Jews were genetically predisposed towards enslaving
others. This has nothing to do with anything that I was talking about.
But again, they would totally disregard the facts of the case and
introduce something totally different. They would introduce a straw
man, get it on the record, and then they would attack the straw man
theyve created. And because they have such great influence in the
media, this straw man, this false information, all of a sudden
becomes part of the record. Even in court theyll reference the same
lies that they put in the newspaper, as though this is some
disinterested source, some third party. And then this brings me to my
next point -- their ability to plant misinformation in the record, and
then use that misinformation as though its some kind of
well-documented, primary source.
Point number ten. This is what I call the use of quislings or
surrogates, or what we in the black community call Uncle Toms. They
have developed this art to a very high level -- at least in my case,
or in the black community. Ive mentioned Henry Louis Skip Gates.
There are many other notorious figures like that in the black
community, who are all too willing to do their bidding. I must say
that these folks are very, very well recompensed. These folks have
been given incredible prominence. They go around the world speaking,
sometimes for fifteen thousand dollars at a time. Those are the kind
of honorariums these folks get. Theyve been given endowed chairs in
their universities. Many of them can hardly put two sentences
together. But because theyve been willing to play this game, theyve
been elevated to prominence. When you pick up The New York Times,
youll see them on the cover of the Sunday magazine section with
regard to issues that pertain to black folk. And it doesnt matter
what it is specifically. It can be the history of Africa. It can be
contemporary politics in the Caribbean. It doesnt matter. They are
quoted as the authorities, and so on. Youll also see them on PBS
television, on multi-million dollar programs and documentaries, and so
on. And this has been a very effective tactic on their part; to pick
out people from within, in this case, my own group -- that is, people
who are willing to, in a sense, sell themselves for the admittedly
very ample rewards theyre given as a result.
Another tactic is their ability to leverage off of the influence which
they undoubtedly have in high places. At Wellesley College, for
example, a new president was coming on just as my case was moving to
its climax, so to speak. And this new college president came in not
knowing anything about what had been happening. And somehow these
folks got her to write a letter, which I suspect they must have
drafted themselves because she had no real knowledge of the background
of what was happening. This was a letter condemning me for teaching
that Jews were involved in the slave trade. This letter, according to
newspaper reports, was sent out to maybe 40 to 60 thousand people. So
you had the incoming president of Wellesley College sending out 40 to
60 thousand letters. This must be unprecedented in the annals of
American higher education, I think. This is something for the Guinness
Book of World Records [Laughter]. A university president sending out
as many as 60, thats six-zero, thousand letters, condemning one of
her own professors for teaching something that is historically true.
Ive never, ever heard of such a case. Maybe I should indeed write to
the Guinness Book of World Records and see if they can immortalize me
by mentioning this.
Then there was the American Historical Association. Three Jewish
historians actually went to the American Historical Association and
got it to decree thats the only term I can use to decree, by
executive fiat, that the Jews were not involved in the slave trade.
[Laughter] Ive never ever heard of any such thing. This is totally
antithetical to the way that academia operates. Whos ever heard of
such a thing: historical fact being determined by presidential decree
from the American Historical Association. We decree [mocking]. Its
like a Papal Bull in the Middle Ages We decree: The Jews were not
involved in the slave trade. [Laughter] It is absolutely amazing, but
they actually succeeded in having this done.
Then theres one of the most amazing cases of all. I was invited to
speak in the city of Worcester, Massachusetts, by Worcester State
College, round about 1994 or 95. And the Jewish groups were actually
able to get the mayor of Worcester one of the largest cities in the
state to call together a special press conference, in which he had
leaders of all the major religions. He had a Roman Catholic head. He
had a Baptist head -- heads of various Protestant denominations -- and
rabbis, ADL types, and so on. The mayor assembled an entire coalition
of religious and apparently civil rights organizations. For what? To
denounce me prior to my appearance at Worcester State College. They
had already tried to put pressure on the college, and on the people
whod invited me. To their great credit, those people stayed strong.
They refused to bow, and I spoke. You would think that the mayor had
more important things to do. [Laughter]. But here these groups were
powerful enough to get the mayor of a major city to pull together a
special conclave on a Jewish press release to denounce me.
Of course, the result was that my speech, when indeed it did take
place, drew the largest audience in the history of the school.
[Laughter and applause] Actually, I didnt originally include this in
my talk, but I really should mention their tendency on occasion to
shoot themselves in the foot. [laughter] If they had left me alone, I
think the only people who would have known of the Jewish involvement
in the slave trade would have been my 30 students and myself.
[Laughter, applause]. But now, of course, the whole world knows about
it. And, as a result, the question of African slavery will never ever
again be raised without the question of the Jewish role being part of
the discussion. Its now in the forefront of peoples consciousness.
And thats due to them. I mean, I never could have promoted this idea
the way that they did. [Laughter].
Another tactic, of course, is their use of the major media. They
become very agitated when one speaks of their control of the media.
Thats one of the worst anti-Semitic things its possible for anybody
to say. And yet, as in the case of the Jewish involvement in
Hollywood, they themselves boast about their prominence in the media.
In fact, in my book, The Jewish Onslaught, I quote Charles Silberman,
a Jewish author, who wrote a book in the 1980s called A Certain
People. And in it he boasts that of the seven top editors of The New
York Times, all seven were Jews. He wrote about the major TV networks,
and although I forget the precise figure, he mentions that the
majority of the senior television network producers were Jews, and
that its these producers who really determine what gets on the news,
what stays out, what spin is put on information, and so on. So the
people who are crucial to spinning the news, he wrote, are primarily
Jews. He named names. And I quoted him in my book. But I was
anti-Semitic for quoting him [laughter], which was not unusual.
When that huge scroll, that press-release scroll, was issued by the
four major Jewish organizations, the Boston Globe, the citys leading
newspaper, published four major articles, including editorials and op
eds, within about six days, attacking me on that question. That
included an op ed in the Sunday paper and a major editorial on the
editorial page. Again, these were filled with lies and distortions. I
responded with a letter, which they refused to publish. So they had
four major items attacking me in less than a week, but they refused to
publish my rejoinder. And so, because these folks have such a sway
over the major media, it gives them a very great advantage.
I remember being interviewed for the Fox front page program. They
interviewed me for over an hour, but I guess that my responses to
their questions were so tight that they could not find any sound bite
to extract to make me look bad. So they gave me a couple sound bites,
maybe half a second each, but instead of letting me talk, they had a
narrator of some kind who spent about five minutes telling folks what
I had said, but not letting me say anything, practically. And that,
too, is one of their tactics.
The use of organizations is another tactic. Of course, I dont have to
tell this audience about the Anti-Defamation League. I think I also
have pride of place on the ADL website. Although I havent checked
recently, for several years I had Honorable Mention every year in
their listing of anti-Semitic occurrences, and so on. In their listing
of anti-Semitic occurrences of the previous year, there would be an
item like, Tony Martin gave a lecture at XYZ college. That would in
itself be cited as an anti-Semitic event -- the fact that I gave a
lecture someplace. The ADL actually issued a book about me. And
although Ive had it for years, I havent got around to reading it.
They took the title of my book and turned it around. This ADL report
is titled Academic Bigotry: Professor Tony Martin's Anti-Jewish
Onslaught.
Another tactic is what I call their unseemly histrionics. When I spoke
at Worcester State College, there was a Jewish lady (I think her name
was Schneider) who was on the Colleges board of trustees. Amidst
great fanfare, she resigned from the board because of the schools
invitation to me. But thats what I call nothing but stupid
histrionics. It got a lot of press, of course. It created a lot of
media interest. But again, this was a case of shooting herself in the
foot. As I remember they had initially scheduled me to speak in an
auditorium that held about a hundred people. But after all the
hysteria, which they themselves had generated, they had to change the
venue to the largest auditorium they had, which held about 300 people.
And even that wasnt big enough. So eventually, when I turned up on a
cold, wintry morning in February, they had that 300-capacity
auditorium totally full. Then they had to run closed-circuit
televisions outside for another 300 people to hear what I had to say.
And of course, my speech got to be front-page news the next morning in
the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, and so on.
Another thing they try to do is to pin what I call a nickname on you.
They try to find some little slip of the tongue, or some little thing
they can take out of context. And if they find it, then every time
your name is mentioned in the media, they stick that on you. For
example, Minister Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam once made a
slip. He was talking about a fact, as I mentioned earlier, that 75
percent of Jewish households in 1830 owned slaves. But he kind of got
it wrong, as one often does in the midst of a speech -- a slip of the
tongue. And it came out, when he said it, that Jews owned 75 percent
of the slaves. It was obviously a slip of the tongue. But they
mentioned it repeatedly ever since, often using that sound bite to
make it look like he was a great distorter of the truth.
In my case, fortunately for me, the most they could pin on me was the
term controversial. So every time they mention me, I get to be the
controversial professor. [Laughter]. Theyre also very good at the
good cop/bad cop game. While someone is trying to destroy you on one
side, someone will come on the other side, all smiley and whatnot. But
beware of the good cop. Very often its better to deal with the bad
cop because the good one will often get you in jail much more quickly
and smoothly than the bad one.
And sometimes they try to play you for a fool. At the same time
theyre trying to destroy you, theyre trying to give you advice.
[laughter] Last year, for example, when I decided to accept David
Irvings invitation to speak in Cincinnati, there was guy whose name I
dont recall who sent me an e-mail telling me what a racist David
Irving was. He sent me this copy of some poem that Irving had written,
saying he didnt want his daughter to marry a Rastafarian or something
-- which is neither here nor there as far as Im concerned. If he
wants he wants his daughter to marry a Rastafarian or anybody else, or
not marry them, So what? That has nothing to do with anything as far
as Im concerned. But again, here are people who are trying to destroy
me, people who have spent the last ten years trying to portray me as
all kinds of things, trying to take my livelihood away. and these same
people can have the chutzpah, I guess, to warn me against somebody
else. The whole idea is just totally amazing to me. Of course, I
didnt pay any great attention to what these guys are trying to say.
Another one of their tactics is hate mail. Their propensity for hate
mail, I discovered, is absolutely amazing. Up to now, I still get a
lot of hate emails. And a few days ago I got a hate postcard. On the
one hand they try to portray themselves in public as these great
liberals and nice folks and whatnot, but at the very same time theyre
getting out this other kind of stuff.
Which also reminds me of the tendency towards violence. There was one
Jewish guy, he said he was a Russian Jew, called Alexander Nechaevsky,
who actually came onto my campus saying that he had come to get me.
Luckily I wasnt there to be gotten that day. I was somewhere out of
town. But he came to the office, saying he had come to get me, and
whatnot. They had to call the campus police, and he was given an order
-- a trespass order, I think they called it -- not to appear on the
campus again.
So these, then, are some of the kinds of tactics that Ive been able
to distill from my interaction with these folks over the last nine or
ten years. Again, Ive been very fascinated by the fact that Ive
become more broadly aware of similar situations involving others so
that, it seems to me, many of these tactics may be of much more
generalized application.
I dont necessarily know the best way to respond. But I can just maybe
outline, very quickly, the ways that I have tried to respond. I have
tried to respond, first of all, by trying to stand on principle. From
the very beginning, as far as Im concerned, Im talking the truth.
Ive said that the Jews were indeed involved in the slave trade. And
as long as I am convinced in my own mind that Im talking the truth,
then thats it. Ive tried to disregard all of the other foolishness,
and Ive tried to stand on the truth. Ive been on TV many times,
debating people from the American Jewish Committee, and so on. And
again, in such face to face debate, all of these tactics come into
play. They try to attack your credibility, your character. But what
Ive always tried to do in those exchanges is to ignore, as far as I
can, all of the ad hominem attacks, and concentrate on the facts. So
theyll say Tony Martin is an anti-Semite. Ill just ignore it. Ill
say, 75 percent of Jewish households owned slaves, according to the
1830 census. Ill stick to the facts, and Ill use those kinds of
media appearances as an opportunity to inform whoever happens to be
listening.
Ive also tried , where I could, to myself leverage off of their media
power. There have been times when they have unwittingly given me an
opportunity to appear before the mass media, and Ive used those
opportunities to the hilt -- again, to push facts. I know in advance
that I have only 30 seconds, so I try to ram as many facts into those
30 seconds as I can, and just forget all the anti-Semitic stuff. I can
deal with that later.
Ive also tried to develop, to the best of my limited resources, some
kind of independent response. I find that independence is a very, very
great benefit. I started my own little publishing company. Its a
little company, but it was very, very effective. My book, The Jewish
Onslaught got out and sold like hotcakes. Its really made a
difference, just to have some kind of an independent medium. It wasnt
a major corporation or anything, but it was independent. I controlled
it, and I was able to fight back to some degree.
I also think its important to have some kind of a support structure.
I was very fortunate. They attacked me at a time when I already had
established a pretty good sort of a support structure in academia. I
was relatively well known. It wasnt as easy for them to destroy my
credibility as it might have been for people who were perhaps less
accomplished. But I found that having a support structure and being
able to avail oneself of it was very important.
And finally, in my case I tried wherever possible to take the matter
to them. I didnt sit back and wait, once the battle was joined. I
found it, in fact. In the early days especially I think that they
werent used to having people fight back the way that I did. I think
it sort of threw them off balance. They came at me with all their
usual bag of tricks, expecting me to fold immediately. But I once I
was able to fight back, and once it began to appear to them that they
had a long protracted struggle on their hands, and not an easy
victory, it took them a while to actually try to regroup and figure
out what to do.
So, I just offer these as perhaps things for folks to think about in
their response. Thank you very much.
This is an edited transcript of Prof. Martins address given in June
2002 in Irvine, California, at the 14th Conference of the Institute
for Historical Review.
About the Author
Tony Martin, a historian, was best known as a specialist of African
American history. For years he served as a professor of Africana
Studies at Wellesley College (Massachusetts).
He was born in 1942 in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. He earned a
B.Sc. honors degree in economics at the University of Hull (England),
and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in history at Michigan State University. He
authored, compiled or edited 14 books. He was perhaps best known for
his work on the life and legacy of the Black Nationalist leader Marcus
Garvey. Martins many articles and reviews appeared in a variety of
academic journals and popular periodicals, as well as in reference
works and anthologies. He was also a popular lecturer, and addressed
general and scholarly audiences across the US, in Canada, and in other
countries. Martin retired in June 2007 as professor emeritus after 34
years with Wellesley Colleges Africana Studies Department. He died in
January 2013 at the age of 70 in Trinidad.