Well-known Trinidadian professor Dr Tony Martin, who recently launched a book making the claim that the first Indian came to the Caribbean in 1595 and not 1838 as is widely believed, died on Thursday night at the West Shore Medical Hospital in Trinidad and Tobago.
Professor Martin, who was 70, was also a Guyanese citizen through marriage.
Martin, who was former Professor Emeritus at Wellesley College, taught for most of his life and had teaching positions at the University of Michigan-Flint, the Cipriani Labour College (Trinidad), and St Mary’s College (Trinidad), according to trinicenter.com. He had also been a visiting professor at the University of Minnesota, Brandeis University, Brown University, and the Colorado College and also spent a year as an honorary research fellow at the University of the West Indies, Trinidad.
The news website said Professor Martin had written, compiled or edited 14 books, including Caribbean History: From Pre-Colonial Origins to the Present (2012); Amy Ashwood Garvey: Pan-Africanist, Feminist and Mrs. Marcus Garvey No. 1, Or, A Tale of Two Amies (2007), Literary Garveyism: Garvey, Black Arts and the Harlem Renaissance (1983), and the classic study of the Garvey Movement, Race First: the Ideological and Organizational Struggles of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association (1976).
Most of his books dealt with Marcus Garvey, on