Claudia Jones

Claudia Jones (1915-1964), journalist and civil rights activist. Jones was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad, the daughter of a journalist. When the local economy collapsed after World War I, her family moved to Harlem. Her mother’s death and the onset of the Great Depression forced them into such impoverished living conditions that she contracted tuberculosis when she was only seventeen. Despite being an excellent student, a lack of funds prevented her from attending college, so she worked in a laundry, a factory, and several other jobs around Harlem. She also began writing a column called “Claudia Comments” for a local newspaper. In 1936 Jones joined the Communist Party, believing that it was more committed to racial justice than any of the mainstream political parties, and quickly rose up the organizational ladder with her writing and organizational skills. She lectured around the country on civil rights, human rights and economic justice and helped organized unemployed youth in Harlem. She also took a leadership role in civil rights organizations such as the National Negro Congress and the New Jersey Labor School. Her “Negro Affairs” column in the CP newspaper Daily Worker criticized colonialism, racism, anti-Semitism, and the exploitation of working people, but she was especially concerned about poor black women, who she labeled victims of triple oppression.

All of this caused her to come under attack from the federal government. The FBI began monitoring her activity in 1943, and she was arrested three times, suffering a heart attack during her imprisonment. Despite rallies held in her support by thousands of other activists, she was finally deported to Britain (Trinidad was still a British colony at the time) in 1955. As part of the early wave of migration of Caribbean blacks to London, Jones immediately became involved in the struggle for social justice in Britain. She joined the British Communist Party and created the newspaper West Indian Gazette, which became a popular publication in the black community of Notting Hill. Through her columns, speeches and other activities, Jones fought racism in immigration laws, housing, education and employment. Still a committed Marxist, she also traveled to Russia and China to meet with political leaders there. After the murder of a young West Indian man and the Notting Hill race riots of 1958, in which more than 300 working-class white men attacked the neighborhood, Jones tried a new tactic. Saying that “a people’s art is the genesis of their freedom,” she organized the Notting Hill Carnival, a celebration of West Indian culture; it was her belief that if white Brits became more educated about the heritage of the country’s new arrivals, intolerance would be replaced by multicultural understanding. Notting Hill Carnival is now one of the largest street festivals in Europe, drawing over 1 million people each year. Only a few years later, though, tuberculosis and heart disease finally caught up with her. Claudia Jones died on Christmas Eve in 1964 and was buried near the grave of Karl Marx in London. In 2002, the “Mother of Notting Hill Carnival” was named #39 on the British Broadcasting Company’s “100 Great Black Britons” list. Though largely unknown in the United States a half-century after her deportation, Claudia Jones is still revered by blacks and labor activists in England, having worked tirelessly during her short life on behalf of racial minorities and workers of all races on both sides of the Atlantic.

©David Brodnax, Sr.