High Com­mis­sion­er Garvin Nicholas host­ed a re­cep­tion at the T&T High Com­mis­sion in Lon­don, last Thurs­day, to cel­e­brate the life and lega­cy of the late Prof An­tho­ny Mar­tin.

Mar­tin, who died on Jan­u­ary 24, in Trinidad, was pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus of Africana Stud­ies at Welles­ley Col­lege where he taught for 34 years.He stud­ied eco­nom­ics at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Hull and qual­i­fied as an at­tor­ney at the Ho­n­ourable So­ci­ety of Gray's Inn, Lon­don, Unit­ed King­dom. He was a bril­liant schol­ar, Pan-African ac­tivist and writer, and was con­sid­ered the world's fore­most au­thor­i­ty on Mar­cus Gar­vey, says a re­lease from the high com­mis­sion.

In his wel­com­ing ad­dress, Nicholas said: "I am struck by Prof Mar­tin's lega­cy as it is rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions our di­as­po­ra have made on the world sphere. "His is an in­spir­ing sto­ry of how a boy from a small is­land grew up to be­come one of the fore­most au­thor­i­ties on Africana Stud­ies, and in­flu­ence so many across the world."A bril­liant schol­ar and ar­dent ac­tivist, Prof Mar­tin was a true son of Trinidad and To­ba­go and I am hap­py for the op­por­tu­ni­ty to cel­e­brate his mem­o­ry here at the mis­sion."Nicholas added that Mar­tin made the Caribbean re­gion proud as an ad­vo­cate of de­vel­op­ment through ed­u­ca­tion at home and abroad and that his con­tri­bu­tion to the scholas­tic and per­son­al de­vel­op­ment of count­less stu­dents was pro­found.

Nicholas said the phi­los­o­phy of ser­vice and pas­sion for learn­ing was one that we must in­cul­cate in the young peo­ple of our re­gion, in striv­ing to build a glob­al­ly com­pet­i­tive na­tion in which the de­vel­op­ment of in­de­pen­dent and in­no­v­a­tive thinkers was para­mount. "There are in­valu­able lessons which can be gleaned from Mar­tin's lega­cy, and chief among them is the im­por­tance of not be­ing afraid to go forth and speak our truths and make our marks."We may hail from a small is­land, but like Tony Mar­tin, we must nev­er be afraid to make a dif­fer­ence."

The fea­ture ad­dress was giv­en by Prof Ce­cil Gutz­more who gave an en­light­en­ing ac­count of Mar­tin's books and oth­er lit­er­ary works re­fer­ring to events which shaped his life and his writ­ing.Gutz­more spoke in par­tic­u­lar of Mar­tin's work on Mar­cus Gar­vey which in­flu­enced the lives of African peo­ple. He de­scribed Mar­tin as a mas­ter of many dis­ci­plines, sub­jects, lit­er­a­cy and cul­tur­al stud­ies as well as a po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist and bi­og­ra­ph­er.Car­ol Houghton, Mar­tin's sis­ter, and Fe­mi Mar­tin, his niece, read ex­tracts from Tony the Tri­ni from Wood­brook (2001), an au­to­bi­o­graph­i­cal work which was dis­cov­ered af­ter his pass­ing.The ex­tracts gave an in­di­ca­tion of the ear­ly-life ex­pe­ri­ences and great sense of hu­mour of the great aca­d­e­m­ic and his­to­ri­an.

Fe­mi Mar­tin al­so per­formed Folk­lore, a sto­ry that she wrote dur­ing her time as Dick­ens 2012 Young Writer in Res­i­dence that ex­plored themes of lega­cy and the im­por­tance of fam­i­ly. The vote of thanks was giv­en by Ansel Wong who al­so helped to or­gan­ise the event.En­ter­tain­ment for the evening was pro­vid­ed by De­bra Ro­main on pan and ca­lyp­son­ian Alexan­der D' Great who wrote a spe­cial song for the event en­ti­tled sim­ply Tony Mar­tin.A num­ber of close friends and fam­i­ly who at­tend­ed the event thanked the high com­mis­sion­er for host­ing the re­cep­tion.