He was an outstanding, uncompromising scholar who waded through hell at Wellesley College. To wit:
In January 1993, I was minding my own business and teaching my Wellesley College survey course on African American History when a funny thing happened. The long arm of Jewish intolerance reached into my classroom. Unknown to me, three student officers of the Jewish Hillel organization (campus B’nai B’rith stablemates of the Anti-Defamation League), sat in on my class and remained for a single period only. Their purpose was to monitor my presentation. As one of them explained in a campus meeting later, Jewish students had noticed The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews among my offerings in the school bookstore. The book documents the considerable Jewish involvement in the transatlantic African slave trade, the dissemination of which knowledge they, as Jews, considered an “anti-Semitic” and most “hateful” act.
One hour and ten minutes undercover convinced these three young Jews that I was teaching this book as a legitimate historical work. They seemed to think that it belonged rather in the realm of “hate literature.”
There appears to have been some prior collusion between the Hillel students and their adult counterpart, the Anti-Defamation League, for Hillel almost immediately began passing out ADL materials targeting the book. These included, inevitably, an ADL reprint of “Black Demagogues and Pseudo-Scholars” by Harvard University’s Henry Louis Gates, Jr., (New York Times, 20 July, 1992), African America’s most notorious Judaeophile. In the weeks and months to come, Gates would be quoted in nearly every attack on my use of the book, as proof that “all” respectable, distinguished and right thinking African American scholars condemned it. The Jews unilaterally anointed Gates with the mantle of head African American scholar in charge of Black academia. He became, in their contrived and wishful thinking, the personification of the entire African American community.
The Hillel activists left my class and headed straight for the president, dean and associate dean of the college. They then went to the current chair of my own department, Africana Studies. Like their elders (for example in the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, by whom Hillel operatives are formally trained in the art of deception and dirty tricks), they evinced a bulldog-like instinct for going after the jugular of their intended victims. For the last three decades of Jewish assaults on Black progress, that jugular has usually meant the economic livelihood of Black people.
By the time that four of the Hillel executive and their rabbi director came to see me they had already mobilized those they perceived of as capable of doing me grievous economic harm. Their task was made considerably less arduous by the fact that the dean of the college, incoming acting president, outgoing chair of the board of trustees, incoming chair of the board of trustees, head and deputy head of the student government, most of the faculty holding endowed chairs and a goodly portion of the tenured faculty, not to mention sundry other persons in high positions, were all Jews. The dean of the college is also on the advisory board of the Friends of Wellesley Hillel.
Dr. Martin’s Self-Defense
In January 1993, on the eve of the Jewish onslaught against me (for teaching that Jews were implicated in the African slave trade), I already had some interest in Black-Jewish relations. It is difficult not to, if one teaches African American history. I had also done some research on Jewish refugee immigration to Trinidad in the 1930’s and ’40’s. This research was facilitated by the cordial cooperation of Jewish informants in two Caribbean countries. United States Jews encountered in the course of the research displayed the gamut of reactions, from friendliness to suspicion to hostility. The idea of a Black man turning up at a Jewish archive to research Jewish history proved unnerving to some. (On the other hand, Jewish scholars are a familiar sight at Black archives, not only as researchers but sometimes even as staff archivists. One of the most prestigious of the Black archival repositories, the Moorland- Spingarn Collection of Howard University, is actually part-named after a Jew).
At one of the Jewish archives I visited, the lady in charge characteristically put me through the appropriate litmus test. “Do you know Len Jeffries?” she asked, with the mien of one presiding over an inquisition. “I wonder if knowing Len Jeffries automatically disqualifies me from using these archives,” I mused to myself. But, like George Washington, I could not tell a lie, so I was constrained to be forthcoming. “Yes, I know him,” I replied. “We are professional colleagues. I have known him for many years.” She was visibly taken aback by this answer and I feared the worst.
She regained her composure, however, and the interrogation continued. “Have you read The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews?” “I have heard of it,” I replied truthfully, “but I have not read it. Funny enough, though, I passed someone selling it on the sidewalk just a few minutes ago.” My reading of the book was still a few months into the future, but already I could not fathom what all the fuss was about. “If it is established,” I suggested to her, “that white people enslaved Africans, and if Jews were an important part of white society, then why should anyone be upset by a book that illustrates the Jewish role in the slave trade?”
My innocent question now appears to have been imbued with prophetic insight. Or maybe it was simply a case of famous last words. The fact that I cannot remember with precision what her response was, in an otherwise clearly recollected conversation, probably reflects the imprecision of her answer. She could not come up with a coherent rationale for her denunciation of the book. As I reflect in hindsight on that conversation, with the benefit of six months of the Jewish onslaught to guide me, it seems as if the major Jewish agencies issue edicts, as it were. Then the Jewish rank and file simply fall in line. “Theirs not to make reply,/Theirs not to reason why,/ Theirs but to do and die….” The power of the Jewish leadership over their constituency is impressive indeed, the presence of some dissenting voices notwithstanding…
http://www.blacksandjews.com/TonyMartin.html
Thanks to Dr. Detroit for the news. Click on the above link to read the rest of the story, and then watch the video:
Speak Your Mind