Linda Marinda Heywood (born Tunapuna, Trinidad and Tobago 1945) is a Caribbean-American historian and professor of African American studies and history at Boston University.

Her dissertation, published as Contested Power in Angola dealt with the transition of the Central Highlands kingdoms (Viye, Mbailundu, Wambo and others) from independence to colonial rule and included the liberation struggle and Angolan civil war from the 1840s to the 1990s.

While at Howard, Heywood taught regularly in the required Black Diaspora class and as a became engaged in research on the African Diaspora, which resulted in the publication of her edited Central Africans and Cultural Transformations book and eventually Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles and the Foundation of the Americas.

Heywood has a BA from Brooklyn College and a PhD from Columbia University.

[2] In 2008, she shared the Herskovits Prize for her book (co-authored with her husband John Thornton) Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles, and the Foundation of the Americas, 1585-1660.