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Trinidad and Tobago -born journalist and activist
- Claudia Vera Jones (née Cumberbatch; 21 February 1915 – 24 December 1964) was a Trinidad and Tobago -born journalist and activist. As a child, she migrated with her family to the United States, where she became a Communist political activist, feminist and Black nationalist, adopting the name Jones as "self-protective disinformation".
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Claudia Vera Jones (née Cumberbatch; 21 February 1915 – 24 December 1964) was a Trinidad and Tobago -born journalist and activist. As a child, she migrated with her family to the United States, where she became a Communist political activist, feminist and Black nationalist, adopting the name Jones as "self-protective disinformation". [1] .
- Overview
- Early life and education
- Activism with the Communist Party
- Founding of the West Indian Gazette and the Notting Hill Carnival
- Later life and death
Claudia Jones (born February 21, 1915, Port of Spain, Trinidad—died December 24, 1964, London, England) Trinidadian social and political activist and journalist who advocated for Black individuals, women, and workers in both the United States and England. Her early experience of racism in the United States shaped her thinking as an adult, and she ...
Jones was born Claudia Vera Cumberbatch in 1915, when the islands of Trinidad and Tobago were part of the British West Indian colonies. In 1924 Cumberbatch and her family moved to the United States and settled in Harlem, New York. As a young child, Cumberbatch witnessed the exploitative work practices that Black women had to endure. Her mother, Syb...
About this time Cumberbatch became involved with social activism and began to publicize the struggles of the working class. She also helped organize rallies and demonstrations defending the accused in the Scottsboro case, a major civil rights controversy surrounding the prosecution of nine young Black men charged with the rape of two white women. In 1936 Cumberbatch joined the Communist Party of the United States of America and the Young Communist League. She wrote articles for the league’s journal, the Daily Worker, and quickly gained leadership positions within a number of organizations, including the National Peace Council and the Women’s Commission of the Communist Party USA. In 1940 she married Abraham Scholnick (divorced 1947), but she began using the last name Jones in an effort to remain anonymous while expressing her political beliefs freely.
Although a committed communist, Jones often wrote about the limits of the doctrine. To Jones, communism could not be successful if it did not consider the working Black woman. Her thinking was perhaps best laid out in the article “An End to the Neglect of the Problems of the Negro Woman!” (1949), which appeared in Political Affairs, a monthly Marxist magazine. Jones discussed how Black women were “super-exploited” by being subjected to sexism, racism, and classicism. She argued that the oppression of Black women undermined not only the success of the Black community but also of women and the working class in general.
Jones settled in London, where thousands of individuals from the Caribbean had settled after World War II. Many immigrants had responded to calls from the government to help rebuild the city and to fill labour shortages. Jones joined the Communist Party in Britain, but her critiques of the patriarchy and of racism were met with hostility. She became involved in other organizations, including the Caribbean Labour Congress and the West Indian Forum and Committee on Racism and International Affairs. In 1958 Jones and Amy Ashwood Garvey founded the West Indian Gazette, one of the first major Black newspapers in England. The paper reported on political events in the United Kingdom, the Caribbean, and Africa. It also became Jones’s vehicle for expressing her views on imperialism, racism, and sexism.
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That summer tensions between the white working-class population and the West Indian immigrants living in the Notting Hill and Shepherd’s Bush neighbourhoods of London erupted in violence. For a week, hundreds of mostly young white individuals attacked Caribbean people and their properties. Similar violence occurred outside the city, particularly in Nottingham. To counteract the negative situation, Jones helped organize a carnival celebration in 1959 to showcase West Indian culture. The celebration later expanded into the Notting Hill Carnival, which continued to draw some two million spectators annually in the early 21st century.
From London, Jones kept up with the American civil rights movement. In 1963, in support of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the March on Washington, she organized a march to the U.S. embassy in London. Jones, who struggled with health issues for most of her adulthood, died a year later at age 49 on Christmas Eve.
Next to the enormous bust of Karl Marx in London’s Highgate Cemetery lies a small stone marking the ashes of a remarkable woman: Claudia Jones. Born in Trinidad, she immigrated as a child to New York City, where she lived until she was deported to Britain in 1955.
Claudia Jones was a feminist, political activist, visionary, and pioneering journalist. Jones was born in Trinidad in 1915. After living and working in the United States, where she was an active member of the American Communist Party, Jones was exiled to the UK in 1955.
Oct 2, 2021 · “Nearly fifty-seven years after her lonely death in a north London flat, let’s put the mighty warrior that was Claudia Jones in a rightful and correct context, as we tell her British African history.”
Jul 24, 2007 · Claudia Jones was a Communist for her entire adult life and a leader in several major movements that marked the twentieth century. These included: the African American liberation movement in the United States, the international Communist movement, the struggle for the rights of women, the battle for world peace, and the Caribbean fight for ...
Feb 20, 2023 · In January 1959, the Trinidadian journalist and activist Claudia Jones launched an indoor Caribbean carnival at St. Pancras Town Hall in response to race riots that had taken place in...
