Claudia Jones
Claudia Jones, née Claudia Vera Cumberbatch (1915 – 1964), was a Trinidad and Tobago-born journalist and activist. As a child, she migrated with her family to the US, where she became a Communist political activist, feminist and black nationalist. Due to the political persecution of Communists in the US, she was deported in 1955 and subsequently lived in the United Kingdom. She then founded Britain's first major black newspaper, the West Indian Gazette, in 1958 and played a central role in founding the Notting Hill Carnival, the second-largest annual carnival in the world.
Claudia Vera Cumberbatch was born
in Trinidad, then a colony of
the British Empire, on 21 February 1915. When she was eight years old, her
family emigrated to New York City following the post-war cocoa price crash
in Trinidad. Her mother died five years later, and her father eventually found
work to support the family. Jones won the Theodore Roosevelt Award for Good Citizenship at
her junior high school. In 1932, due to poor living
conditions in Harlem, she was struck with tuberculosis at the age of 17, The tuberculosis caused
irreparable damage to her lungs leading to lengthy stays in hospitals
throughout her life. She graduated from high school, but her family could not afford
the expenses to attend her graduation ceremony.
Despite being academically bright,
being classed as an immigrant woman severely limited Jones' career choices.
Instead of going to college she began 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.
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Trying to find organisations
supporting the Scottsboro Boys (nine African-American teenagers, ages
12 to 19, accused in Alabama of raping two white women in 1931), she
joined the Young Communist League USA in 1936. She was
also drawn in by their opposition to the Italian invasion of Ethiopia (see
previous posts). In 1937 she joined the editorial staff of the Daily Worker, rising to editor
of the Weekly Review by 1938. During WWII, the Young Communist
League became American Youth for Democracy and Jones
became editor of its monthly journal, Spotlight. After the war,
Jones 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.
As a communist, black nationalist and
feminist, Jones' main focus was on creating "an anti-imperialist
coalition, managed by working-class leadership, fueled by the involvement of
women."
Jones focused on growing the party's
support women of all races. Not only did she work towards getting black women
equal respect within the party, she also worked for them respect specifically
as mothers, workers, and women. She campaigned for job training programs, equal
pay for equal work, government controls on food prices, and funding for wartime
childcare programs. Jones supported a subcommittee to address the "women's
question". She insisted on the development within the party of theoretical
training of women comrades, the organization of women into mass organizations,
daytime classes for women, and "babysitter" funds to allow for
women's activism. These were hugely important as they showed astute awareness
that theoretically allowing women to join the party is not enough without
considering the social and economic barriers preventing their active
participation.
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Jones' best known piece of writing,
"An End to the Neglect of the Problems of the Negro Woman!", appeared
in 1949 in the magazine Political Affairs. It exhibits her 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
capitalists know, far better than many progressives seem to know, that once
Negro women begin to take action, the militancy of the whole Negro people, and
thus of the anti-imperialist coalition, is greatly enhanced.
Historically, the Negro woman has
been the guardian, the protector, of the Negro family... As mother, as Negro,
and as worker, the Negro woman fights against the wiping out of 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, but 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.’
==================
As elected member of the National
Committee of the Communist Party USA, Jones also organised and spoke at events.
As a result, she was arrested in 1948 and sentenced to the first of four spells
in prison. While incarcerated, she was threatened with deportation to Trinidad
– despite having not lived there since she was 8 years old.
Following a hearing by the Immigration and Naturalization
Service, she was found in violation of the McCarran Act for being an alien (non-US citizen) who had
joined the Communist Party. Several witnesses testified to her role in party
activities, and she had identified herself as a party member since 1936 when
completing her Alien Registration on 24 December 1940, in conformity with
the Alien Registration
Act. As such, she was ordered to be deported but remained in prison for the
foreseeable future.
In 1951, aged 36 and in prison, she
suffered her first heart attack. That same year, she and 11 others were tried
and convicted of "un-American activities" under the Smith Act, specifically
activities against the United States government. The charges against Jones related to an
article she had written for the Political Affairs magazine under the
title Women in the Struggle for Peace and Security. The Supreme Court refused to
hear their appeal. In 1955, Jones began her sentence of a year and a day at
the Federal Reformatory for Women at Alderson, West Virginia. She was released on 23
October 1955.
When the US tried to deport Jones,
she was refused entry to Trinidad and Tobago, in part because the colonial governor was of the
opinion that "she may prove troublesome". She was eventually
offered residency in the United Kingdom on humanitarian grounds, and federal
authorities agreed to allow it when she agreed to cease contesting her
deportation. On 7 December 1955, 350 people came to see her off.
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Jones arrived in London two weeks
later, at a time when the British African-Caribbean community was
expanding. Upon her arrival, the Communist Party of Great Britain
(CPGB) sent several Caribbean communists to greet her. These communist
activists included Jones's cousin Trevor Carter. However, on engaging the political community in
the UK, she was disappointed to find that many British communists were hostile
to the presence of a black woman in the party. Determined to change this from
within, she immediately joined the CPGB upon her arrival in Britain and
remained a member until her death.
In the UK, Jones found a community
that needed active organisation. She became involved in the British African-Caribbean community and began
aiding them to access basic facilities, as well as starting an early movement
for equal rights. Supported by her cousin, her friends, and her lifelong
mentor Paul Robeson [You’re Dead to Me
by Greg Jenner just did a great podcast on him, check it out], Jones campaigned
against institutional racism in areas including housing, education and
employment. She addressed peace rallies and the Trade Union Congress, and visited Japan, Russia, and
China spreading her message globally.
In the early 1960s, despite failing
health, Jones helped organise campaigns against the Commonwealth Immigrants Bill (passed in
April 1962), which would make it harder for non-whites to migrate to Britain.
She also campaigned for the release of Nelson Mandela during his imprisonment, and spoke out
against racism in the workplace which at the time was still rampant.
--------------------------------------------
From her experiences in the United
States, Jones (rightly) believed that "people without a voice were as
lambs to the slaughter." In March 1958, in a room above a barber's shop in Brixton, she founded
and thereafter edited the West Indian Gazette and Afro-Asian Caribbean News (WIG).
This paper became a crucial contributor to the rise of consciousness within
the Black British community.
Jones wrote in her last published
essay, "The Caribbean Community in Britain", in Freedomways (Summer
1964): ‘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 Indies, full economic, social and
political equality and respect for human dignity for West Indians 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 Jones's death in December 1964.
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One crisis which black campaigners
like Jones had to navigate during this era were the Notting Hill Race Riots. Occurring
in August 1958, four months after the launch of WIG, the Notting Hill race riots are often
believed to have been triggered by an assault against Majbritt Morrison, a
white Swedish woman, on 29 August 1958. Morrison had been arguing with her
Jamaican husband, Raymond Morrison, at an underground station when a group of
white people attempted to intervene. A small fight broke out between the
intervening people and some of Raymond Morrison's friends. The following day
Majbritt Morrison was verbally and physically assaulted by a gang of white
youths that had recalled seeing her the night before. According to one report,
the youths threw milk bottles at Morrison and bombarded her with racial slurs, while
a later report stated that she had also been struck in the back with an iron
bar. Later that night a mob of 300 to 400 white people were seen on Bramley
Road attacking the houses of West Indian residents. The disturbances, rioting
and attacks continued every night until 5 September.108 people were charged –
72 white and 36 black.
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In response to the racist media
coverage of the riots in the daily papers (British media? Racist? As if!!!!)
Jones began receiving visits from members of the black British community and
also from various national leaders responding to the concern of their citizens.
That she was someone leaders chose to turn to in such a moment of national
crsis shows her importance in the British community at this time. Claudia
identified the need to "wash the taste of Notting Hill and Nottingham out
of our mouths". It was suggested that to do so, the British black
community should have a carnival – despite the winter weather! Jones used her
connections to gain use of St Pancras Town Hall in January 1959 for the
first Mardi-Gras-based
carnival, directed by and starring prominent black-british artists. The
event was televised nationally by the BBC. These early celebrations were epitomised by the slogan: "A
people's art is the genesis of their freedom."
The souvenir brochure stated: "A
part of the proceeds [from the sale] of this brochure are to assist the
payments of fines of coloured and white youths involved in the Notting Hill
events." Jones and the West Indian Gazette also
organised five other annual indoor Caribbean Carnival cabarets at such London
venues. These events are seen as precursors of the celebration of Caribbean
Carnival that culminated in the Notting Hill Carnival which is now attended by over a
million people a year, making it one of the world’s biggest street festivals.
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Jones died on Christmas Eve 1964,
aged 49, and was tragically discovered at her flat on Christmas day. A
post-mortem declared that she had suffered a massive heart attack, due to heart disease and complications from her earlier bouts of tuberculosis.
Her funeral on 9 January 1965 became
a large and political ceremony, with her burial plot selected to be that
located to the left of the tomb of her hero, Karl Marx, in Highgate Cemetery, North London. A
message from her mentor was read:
“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.”
The Claudia Jones Organisation was
founded in London in 1982 by Yvette Thomas and others to support and
empower women and families of African-Caribbean heritage.
To celebrate what would have been her
100th birthday, various activities took place from June 2014
onwards. The most successful were possibly those organised by Community
Support, which put substantial resources into basic research into aspects of
her life and work. This led to new revelations and rediscoveries about Claudia
Jones, not included in the three printed biographies, or her film biography.
Jones fought to better the world for everyone – no
matter race, gender, politics, or nationality. She showed that home does not
always equal birth place, and that you can make a difference to the world no
matter what your roots.
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