"Claudia Cumberbatch Jones" (February 15 1915-December 24-1964)

Was a Trinidadian journalist,who became a political activist nationalist through Communism.She was born in Belmont,Port of Spain,Trinidad.When she was nine years old, her family emigrated to New York City following the post-war cocoa price crash in Trinidad.Claudia mother died five years later,and her father eventually found work to support the family.Claudia won the Theodore Roosevelt Award for Good Citizenship at her Junior high school.In 1932,due to poor living conditions,she was struck with tuberculosis,a condition that irreparably damaged her lungs and plagued her for the rest of her life.Claudia graduated from high school, her family was so poor that they could afford to attend the graduation.Despite being academically bright,classed as an immigrant woman she was severely limited in her career choices,so instead of going  to college Claudia began  working working in a laundry and subsequently found other retail work in Harlem.During this time she joined a drama group,and began to write a column called "Claudia Comments"for a Harlem journal.In 1936,trying to find organisations supporting the Scottsboro Boys,she joined the American Communists Party (ACP).In 1937 she joined the editorial staff of the Daily Worker,rising by 1938 to become editor of the Weekly Review.After the Young Communist League became American Youth for Democracy during World War II,Claudia became the editor of its monthly journal,spotlight.After the war,she became executive secretary of the Women's National Commission,secretary for the Women's Commission of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA),and in 1952 took the same position at the National Peace Council.In 1953,she took over the editorship of Negro Affairs.Her best known piece of writing,"An End to the Neglect of the Problems of the Negro Woman!"appeared in 1949 in Political Affairs.It exhibits Claudia'development of what later came to be termed "intersectional"analysis within a Marxist framework.In it,she wrote:The bourgeoisie is fearful of the militancy of the Negro woman,and for good reason.The capitalist know,far better than many progressive seem to know,that once Negro women begin to take action,the militancy of the whole whole Negro people,and thus of the anti-imperialiost coalition,is greatly enhanced...As mother,as Negro, and as worker, the Negro woman fights against the wiping out the Negro family, against the Jim Crow ghetto existence which destroys the health,morale,and very life of millions of her sisters,brothers,and children.Viewed in this light,it is not accidental that the American bourgeoisie has intensified its oppression,not only of the Negro people in general,of Negro women in particular.Nothing so exposes the drive to fascization in the nation as the callous attitude which the bourgeoisie displays and cultivates toward Negro women.An elected member of the National Committee of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA),she also organized and spoke at events. As a result of her membership of CPUSA and various associated activities,in 1948 Claudia was arrested and sentenced to the first of four spells in prison.Incarcerted on Ellis Island,she was threated with being deported to Trinidad.Following a hearing by the immigration and Naturalization Service,she was found in violation of the McCarran Act for being an alien (non-U.S. citizen) who had joined the Communist Party.Several witnesses testified to her role in party activities,and Claudia had indentified herself  as a party member since 1936 when completing her Alien Registration on December 24 1940,in conformity with the Alien Registration Act.She was ordered deported on December 21 1950.In prison.in 1951 she suffered her first attack.That same year,she was tried and convicted with eleven others,including her friend Elizabeth Gurley Flynn,of "un-American activities"under the Smith Act,specifically activities against the United States government.The Supreme Court refused to hear their appeal.In 1955,Claudia began her sentence of a year and a day at the federal Reformatory for Women at Alderson,West Virginia. She was released on October 23 1955.  She was refused entry to Trinidad and Tobago,in part because the British Colonial governor Major General Sir Hubert Elvin Rance considered that "she may prove troublesome."She was eventually offered residency in the United States on humanitarian grounds,and federal authorities agreed to allow that when she agreed to cease contesting her deportation.On December 7 1955,at Harlem's Hotel Theresa, 350 people met to see her off.Claudia arrived in London two weeks later,at the time of the building of the Empire Windrush community,and vast expansion of the British African-Caribbean community,On engaging the political community that she had just left in U.S., she was disappointed to find that many British communists were hostile to a black woman.Landing in England at a time when many landlords,shops and even some government establishments displayed signs which said "No Irish,No Blacks"Claudia found a community that needed active organization.She began to get involved in the British  African-Caribbean community to organize both both access to basic facilities,as well as the early movement for equal rights.Supported by her friends Trevor Carter,Nadia Cattouse,Amy Ashwood Garvey,Beryl McBurnie,Pearl Prescord and her lifelong mentor Paul Robeson,Claudia campaigned against racism in housing,education and employment.She addressed peace rallies and the Trade Union Congress,and visited Japan,Russia,and China,where she met Mao Zedong.In the early 1960s,despite failing healt,Claudia helped organize campaigns against the 1876 immigration Act,which would which would make it harder for non-whites to migrate to Britain.She also campaigned for the release of Nelson Mandela,and spoke out against racism in the workplace.From her experience in the U.S.,Claudia knew that "people without a voice were as lambs to the slaughter.In 1958 above a Barbers' shop in Brixton,she founded and thereafter edited the anti-imperialist,anti-racist paper,The West Indian Gazette And Afro-Asian Caribbean News (WIG).The paper became a key contributor to the rise of consciousness within the Black British community.She wrote in her last published essay,"The Caribbean Community in Britain,"in Freedomways:
"The newspaper has served as a catalyst,quickening the awareness,socially and politically,of West Indians, Afro-Asians and their friends. Its editorial stand is for a united, independent West full economic,social and political equality and respect for human dignity for West Indies,full economic,and political equality and respect for human dignity for West Indies and Afro-Asians in Britain,and for peace and friendship between all Commonwealth and world peoples.
Always strapped for cash,WIG folded eight months and four editions after Claudia's own death.Claudia most-well-known lasting contribution in the UK is considered to be the Nothing Hill Carnival.Four months after launching WIG,racial riots broke out in Notting Hill,London and Robin Hood Chase,Nottingham;followed a few months later by the murder of young West Indian carpenter Kelso Cochrane by six white youths in racially motivated attack.In light of the "black on white"racially driven analysis by the existing British daily newspapers,Claudia began receiving visits from members of the black British community,as well as various national leaders responding to the concern of their citizens,including:Cheddi Jagan of British Guiana;Norman Manley of Jamaica;Eric Williams of Trinidad and Tobago;plus Phyllis Shand Allfrey and Carl La Corbiniere of the West Indies Federation.As a result, she identified the need to "wash the taste of Nothting Hill and Nottingham out of our mouths."It was suggested that the British black community should have a carnival;It was December 1958,so the next question was:"In winter"Claudia used her connections to gain use of St Pancras town hall in January 1959 for the first Mardi-Gras based carnival,which headlined the Boscoe Holder Dance Troupe,jazz guitarist Fitzroy Coleman and singer Cleo Laine;and was televised nationally by the BBC.These early celebrations were epitomized by the slogan "A slogan "A people's art is the genesis of their freedom.Funds raised from the event were used to pay the court fees and fines of convicted young black men.Claudia died on Christmas Eve.Found on Christmas Day at her flat,a post-mortem declared that she had died of a massive heart attack,due to heart disease and Tuberculosis.Her funeral on January 9 1965,was a large and political ceremony,with her burial plot selected to be that left of her hero,Karl Marx,in Highgate Cemetery,North London.A message from Paul Robeson was read out:
"It was a great privilege to have known Claudia Jones.She was a vigorous and courageous leader of the Communist Party of the United States,and was very active in the work for the unity of white and coloured peoples and for dignity and equality,especially for the Negro people and for women.