Jewish
Attack On Black Academics: Incident At Wellesley College
13 February 2010By Tony Martin
In January 1993, I was minding my own business and
teaching my Wellesley College survey course on African
American History when a funny thing happened. The long
arm of Jewish intolerance reached into my classroom.
Unknown to me, three student officers of the Jewish
Hillel organization (campus B'nai B'rith stablemates
of the Anti-Defamation League), sat in on my class and
remained for a single period only. Their purpose was
to monitor my presentation. As one of them explained
in a campus meeting later, Jewish students had noticed
The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews among
my offerings in the school bookstore. The book
documents the considerable Jewish involvement in the
transatlantic African slave trade, the dissemination
of which knowledge they, as Jews, considered an
"anti-Semitic" and most "hateful" act.
One hour and ten minutes undercover convinced these
three young Jews that I was teaching this book as a
legitimate historical work. They seemed to think that
it belonged rather in the realm of "hate literature."
There appears to have been some prior collusion
between the Hillel students and their adult
counterpart, the Anti-Defamation League, for Hillel
almost immediately began passing out ADL materials
targeting the book. These included, inevitably, an ADL
reprint of "Black Demagogues and Pseudo-Scholars" by
Harvard University's Henry Louis Gates, Jr., (New York
Times, 20 July, 1992), African America's most
notorious Judaeophile. In the weeks and months to
come, Gates would be quoted in nearly every attack on
my use of the book, as proof that "all" respectable,
distinguished and right thinking African American
scholars condemned it. The Jews unilaterally anointed
Gates with the mantle of head African American scholar
in charge of Black academia. He became, in their
contrived and wishful thinking, the personification of
the entire African American community.
The Hillel activists left my class and headed straight
for the president, dean and associate dean of the
college. They then went to the current chair of my own
department, Africana Studies. Like their elders (for
example in the American Israel Public Affairs
Committee, by whom Hillel operatives are formally
trained in the art of deception and dirty tricks),
they evinced a bulldog-like instinct for going after
the jugular of their intended victims. For the last
three decades of Jewish assaults on Black progress,
that jugular has usually meant the economic livelihood
of Black people.
By the time that four of the Hillel executive and
their rabbi director came to see me they had already
mobilized those they perceived of as capable of doing
me grievous economic harm. Their task was made
considerably less arduous by the fact that the dean of
the college, incoming acting president, outgoing chair
of the board of trustees, incoming chair of the board
of trustees, head and deputy head of the student
government, most of the faculty holding endowed chairs
and a goodly portion of the tenured faculty, not to
mention sundry other persons in high positions, were
all Jews. The dean of the college is also on the
advisory board of the Friends of Wellesley Hillel.
Dr. Martin's Self-Defense
In January 1993, on the eve of the Jewish onslaught
against me (for teaching that Jews were implicated in
the African slave trade), I already had some interest
in Black-Jewish relations. It is difficult not to, if
one teaches African American history. I had also done
some research on Jewish refugee immigration to
Trinidad in the 1930's and '40's. This research was
facilitated by the cordial cooperation of Jewish
informants in two Caribbean countries. United States
Jews encountered in the course of the research
displayed the gamut of reactions, from friendliness to
suspicion to hostility. The idea of a Black man
turning up at a Jewish archive to research Jewish
history proved unnerving to some. (On the other hand,
Jewish scholars are a familiar sight at Black
archives, not only as researchers but sometimes even
as staff archivists. One of the most prestigious of
the Black archival repositories, the Moorland-
Spingarn Collection of Howard University, is actually
part-named after a Jew).
At one of the Jewish archives I visited, the lady in
charge characteristically put me through the
appropriate litmus test. "Do you know Len Jeffries?"
she asked, with the mien of one presiding over an
inquisition. "I wonder if knowing Len Jeffries
automatically disqualifies me from using these
archives," I mused to myself. But, like George
Washington, I could not tell a lie, so I was
constrained to be forthcoming. "Yes, I know him," I
replied. "We are professional colleagues. I have known
him for many years." She was visibly taken aback by
this answer and I feared the worst.
She regained her composure, however, and the
interrogation continued. "Have you read The Secret
Relationship Between Blacks and Jews?" "I have heard
of it," I replied truthfully, "but I have not read it.
Funny enough, though, I passed someone selling it on
the sidewalk just a few minutes ago." My reading of
the book was still a few months into the future, but
already I could not fathom what all the fuss was
about. "If it is established, " I suggested to her,
"that white people enslaved Africans, and if Jews were
an important part of white society, then why should
anyone be upset by a book that illustrates the Jewish
role in the slave trade?"
My innocent question now appears to have been imbued
with prophetic insight. Or maybe it was simply a case
of famous last words. The fact that I cannot remember
with precision what her response was, in an otherwise
clearly recollected conversation, probably reflects
the imprecision of her answer. She could not come up
with a coherent rationale for her denunciation of the
book. As I reflect in hindsight on that conversation,
with the benefit of six months of the Jewish onslaught
to guide me, it seems as if the major Jewish agencies
issue edicts, as it were. Then the Jewish rank and
file simply fall in line. "Theirs not to make
reply,/Theirs not to reason why,/ Theirs but to do and
die...." The power of the Jewish leadership over their
constituency is impressive indeed, the presence of
some dissenting voices notwithstanding.
But our conversation was not over yet. It was to take
an even more unexpected turn. "Have you heard of the
Crown Heights riots?" she enquired, referring to
tensions between the Black and Hasidic Jewish
communities in Brooklyn, New York. A confrontation had
been triggered by the unpunished killing of young
Gavin Cato and the maiming of his cousin Angela Cato
by a Hasidic vehicle, as the children played on the
sidewalk in front of their house. A Jewish student,
Yankel Rosenbaum, was killed in the ensuing scuffles.
"Yankel Rosenbaum was doing research right here," she
said. "He was in here every day, reading the files,
just like you. He sat at the same table where we have
placed your materials." Even with my own personal
Jewish onslaught still many months into the future,
this revelation proved a sobering one to me. And as I
ponder it with the benefit of a tempestuous hindsight,
I wonder what inscrutable fate brought me to this
archive, to this conversation, to Yankel Rosenbaum's
table, at a time when my authorship of a book called
The Jewish Onslaught would have seemed a bizarre
improbability.
I could not know then that I would ere long be plunged
into an intense reading of Jewish and Black-Jewish
history, covering many lands and historical periods,
as I sought to bring to my situation a more
wide-ranging perspective. The onslaught of the last
six months now threatens to turn me into an expert on
Jewish history. For that I must thank the purveyors of
intolerance with whom I have had to do battle of late.
What I offer here is an involved yet detached look at
the onslaught against me, from my unique vantage point
as both intended victim and historian. This is written
in the heat of battle. Perhaps time, further study and
more reflection may either modify or enrich the
analysis offered here. But the immediacy of analysis
can only be captured now.
Over the last six months I have been fairly deluged
with articles, books, newspaper clippings, letters,
unpublished documents and references for further
perusal. As if obeying the orders of an unseen force,
well-wishers (known and unknown) have seen to it that
my crash course in Black-Jewish history should not be
wanting in resource materials. Even the senders of
hate and hostile mail have fit into the plan, for
their clippings have been useful and informative.
Editorial Statement
Barely a week after the publication of The Jewish
Onslaught, Wellesley's new president, Diana Chapman
Walsh, has taken the extraordinary step of issuing a
formal denunciation of the new book. In a December 9,
1993 statement disseminated to all students, faculty,
staff, alumnae and "friends of the college" she
declares as follows -- "We are profoundly disturbed
and saddened by Professor Martin's new book because it
gratuitously attacks individuals and groups at
Wellesley College through innuendo and the application
of racial and religious stereotype."
Due to President Walsh's newness on campus, it can
plausibly be surmised that she has relied heavily on
the opinions of her advisors. The baleful influence of
these shadowy figures is plainly evident in the
palpable one-sidedness of the presidential
proclamation, in its reliance on sweeping derogatory
generalizations and in its inability to support its
assertions with documentation of any sort. In all
these ways and more the presidential statement is
reflective of official and quasi-official approaches
of the last twelve months.
Our new president has squandered a golden opportunity
to bring fresh leadership and even-handed tolerance to
the present controversy.
Martin on the Presidential
Denunciation of The Jewish Onslaught
The Jewish Onslaught was published as a response to
the unprincipled attacks, defamatory statements,
assaults on my livelihood and physical threats
directed against me for several months. These emanated
principally from the Jewish community and its agents
and were triggered by my classroom use of a work
detailing Jewish involvement in the African slave
trade. In The Jewish Onslaught I sought to put my
subjective situation into the context of deteriorating
Black-Jewish relations of recent decades. I also
attempted to evaluate the tactics used against me in
the context of the well-documented dirty tricks that
the Jewish groups have used against me in the context
of the well-documented dirty tricks that the Jewish
groups have used against Andrew Young, Jesse Jackson,
David Dinkins, Minister Louis Farrakhan, Len Jeffries,
Black parents in Ocean Hill-Brownsville (Brooklyn) and
any number of Euro-American individuals and
organizations.
The Jewish Onslaught is a book of analysis supported
by normal scholarly documentation. There is not a
single "stereotype" or generalization in it that is
not buttressed by evidence, either from my personal
experience of the last year or from the historical
record. I challenge President Walsh to move from her
broad derogatory generalizations to specific instances
to prove otherwise.
President Walsh, like many of the Jewish
spokespersons, has a problem with my "recurrent" and
allegedly "gratuitous" utilization of "racial or
religious identification of individuals. ..." This is
her way of saying that Black people are not allowed to
respond to Jews as Jews. Even after being attacked
primarily by the Hillel Foundation, American Jewish
Committee, Anti-Defamation League, American Jewish
Congress, Jewish Community Relations Council and every
Jewish newspaper and spokesperson for miles around, I
am supposed to maintain the fiction that the onslaught
against me is ethnically and religiously
indeterminate.
A recent article in Black Books Bulletin mentions over
twenty books on Black-Jewish relations in the personal
library of its author. The author is aware of only two
books by Blacks on the subject. If President Walsh
(and the Jewish community) are to have their way, then
this will forever remain a one-way discourse. I
therefore ask again, as I asked in The Jewish
Onslaught, "What makes Jews so special? By what
dispensation in Adam's will do they enjoy monopolistic
privileges over a debate that concerns Blacks as well
as Jews? Who has placed them beyond the reach of
scholarly enquiry and ethnic identification? "
President Walsh claims that The Jewish Onslaught
"violates the basic principles" of, among other
things, the "norms of civil discourse." Yet, in her
zeal to uncover "innuendo" in my work she seems to
have missed the blatant lack of civility in the many
articles attacking me. Is she not aware of Professor
Marcellus Andrews' Wellesley News reference to me as a
"racist Pied Piper?" Did no one show her his
description of Wellesley's Black women as
"intellectually weak and morally lazy?" Did Mary
Lefkowitz, Mellon Professor in the Humanities, neglect
to send President Walsh a complimentary copy of her
article in Measure (No. 118, September/October 1993),
wherein she maliciously and scurrilously alleged that
I called a student "a white fucking bitch?" Lefkowitz
alleged further that "The young woman fell down as a
result of his onslaught and Martin bent over to
continue his rage at her." Did President Walsh not
see, in her reading of The Jewish Onslaught, the text
of a racist cartoon by a Wellesley alumna in the
Boston Jewish Times? The cartoonist designated Black
women as "Ms. Washington" (no different than the "Hymietown"
remark that Jews claimed to be so scandalized by) and
seemed to suggest that Black students be taught from
the works of segregationists, Ku Kluxers and
pseudo-scientific racists. Did President Walsh not
read the Jewish hate mail reproduced in The Jewish
Onslaught ? "I hate niggers to my very bone marrow,"
ran a typical sentence. "Not all Jews debate apes.
Some of us want them all to die." I have been a
veritable oasis of civility in the present debate.
I agree with Justice Holmes, as quoted by President
Walsh -- "The best test of truth is the power of the
thought to get itself accepted in the competition of
the market." The Jewish onslaught has consistently
striven to stifle the "competition of the market" by
its defamatory rantings and its demands for my
dismissal. The present presidential proclamation
regrettably ranges itself alongside this ignoble
campaign.
But "the competition of the market" has yet managed to
assert itself, as can be seen in the steadily shifting
positions of the onslaught. From an initial denial
that Jews had any role in African slavery at all,
there slowly emerged a reluctant admission of minor
and peripheral involvement. As the debate intensified
and the Jewish denial of the undeniable threatened to
expose its adherents to ridicule, the Washington Post
(first among major newspapers, to the best of my
knowledge), was finally permitted to admit the full
extent of Jewish culpability. In a carefully staged
(and not at all pro-Black article) of October 17, 1993
the deniers of Jewish involvement in the African
holocaust were shown to be as wrong as they could be.
The present controversy demands honest dialogue, not
crude attempts at demonization. If President Walsh
desires to extricate herself from the hole into which
she has fallen, let her collaborate with me (and with
interested students), on the convening at Wellesley
College of a serious scholarly conference on the role
of Jews in the African slave trade. She can invite
Skip Gates, Cornel West and anyone else acceptable to
the Jewish establishment to argue their case. I will
nominate an equal number of scholars to defend the
perspective which I endorse. The spirit of Justice
Holmes will be lifted.
As my mother used to say, "One hand can't clap." As
Ray Charles was wont to soulfully sing, "It takes two
to tango."
Anti Martin Hatred
Internet Threats
Amherst · An Internet computer message suggested
the arming of Jews to kill Blacks immediately
following a scholarly address on Black history to the
University of Massachusetts community. This threat of
violence appeared in the Discussion Group for the
National Faculty Network, a collection of college
professors throughout the United States. The message
was posted to the network the night of the lecture in
which Wellesley College professor Tony Martin outlined
the oppressive structure of the African slave trade.
The computer mailbox address indicated that the writer
is a Jewish professor at Mount Holyoke College in
Massachusetts who attended the event:
" Shalom all. I am still shaking right now....I just
walked in the door....I know with the Hillel here we
are together in a great community -- working on a
response to the disgusting events of tonight...but for
now I am asking all of you for a response. Learn to
operate AK-47, and have good supply of ammunition, so
you will be ready when they come to kill us....
And how do we stop these anti-semites from speaking? I
doubt there is a way to stop them from speaking. They
are more numerous and more prepared to use raw brute
force. Even if you could take them to court and win an
injuction against these bastards, it will just be
seized upon by the rest of the blacks as further
evidence of a Jewish conspiracy against blacks."
According to campus police, the gathering, sponsored
by the Black student organization, was completely
peaceful and the participants were law-abiding. Martin
is the author of thirteen books and numerous articles
and is the world's foremost expert on the Marcus
Garvey movement. According to sources, Professor
Martin was immediately informed of the threat but
would not comment on security operations.
Jew Stalks Black professor
Russian-Jewish stalker claiming to be "on a
mission" threatened to attack Professor Tony Martin at
his Wellesley College office. Martin, whose
best-selling book The Jewish Onslaught examines the
role of organized Jewry in a slanderous attack on
Afrocentricity, was unharmed and not present during
the April 21 incident.
A "profusely sweating" Alexander Nechaevsky, 34, told
campus police that after viewing a televised lecture
by Dr. Martin he found him to be "rude and a racist"
and came to "confront" him about his views. In the
lecture Martin outlined the Jewish origin of the
Hamitic Myth which claims that Black humans are cursed
black by God and which provided justification for the
African slave trade.
Nechaevsky ranted that "he was not a Jewish wimp and
that he was from Russia where they know how to handle
things." He then conversed at length with a Jewish
professor who has led the campus onslaught against
Martin.
Martin said that he is not surprised at the attack.
"Part of the Jewish onslaught against Black thinkers
is to create an atmosphere of intolerance which leads
to violent confrontations. "
Police ejected Nechaevsky and banned him from
Wellesley College property. Later, Martin's office
received telephone threats saying that "Tony Martin
better watch his step."
In 1993, Prof. Tony Martin added the Nation of
Islam's book The Secret Relationship Between Blacks
and Jews, Vol. 1 to his Wellesley College course on
Black History. Thus began the Jewish Onslaught against
him and all Black academics in America.
Biography
TONY MARTIN has taught at Wellesley College,
Massachusetts, since 1973. He was tenured in 1975 and
has been a full professor of Africana Studies since
1979. Prior to coming to Wellesley he taught at the
University of Michigan-Flint, the Cipriani Labour
College (Trinidad) and St. Mary's College (Trinidad).
He has been a visiting professor at the University of
Minnesota, Brandeis University, Brown University and
The Colorado College. He also spent a year as an
honorary research fellow at the University of the West
Indies, Trinidad.
Professor Martin has authored or compiled and edited
eleven books, including Literary Garveyism: Garvey,
Black Arts and the Harlem Renaissance and the classic
study of the Garvey Movement, Race First: the
Ideological and Organizational Struggles of Marcus
Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement
Association. In 1965 he qualified as a barrister-at-
law at the Honourable Society of Gray's Inn (London).
He did his M.A. and Ph.D. in history at Michigan State
University and the B.Sc. honours degree in economics
at the University of Hull (England).
Professor Martin is currently working on biographies
of three Caribbean women -- Amy Ashwood Garvey, Audrey
Jeffers and Trinidad's Kathleen Davis ("Auntie Kay").
He is also nearing completion of The Afro-Trinidadian:
Endangered Species/Oh, What a Nation and a study of
European Jewish immigration to Trinidad in the 1930's.
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