Claudia Jones, née Claudia Vera Cumberbatch, 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, adopting the name Jones as `self-protective disinformation’.
1915
1964
Trinidad and Tobago
American/Trinidadian
Jones won the Theodore Roosevelt Award for Good Citizenship at her junior high school
1959 – Jones used her connections to gain use of St Pancras Town Hall for the first Mardi Gras based carnival, These early celebrations were epitomised by the slogan A people’s art is the genesis of their freedom.
When she was eight years old, her family emigrated to New York City following the postwar cocoa price crash in Trinidad. Her mother died five years later, and her father eventually found work to support the family. In 1932 at the age of 17 she contracted tuberculosis, which caused irreparable damage to her lungs and led 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.
Jones arrived in London in 1955 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 Billy Strachan, Winston Pinder, and Jones’ cousin Trevor Carter. She joined the CPGB upon her arrival in Britain, and remained a member until her death.
However, on engaging with the political community in the UK, she was disappointed to find that many British communists were hostile to a Black woman
In March 1958 she founded the West Indian Gazette from a room above a barber’s shop in Brixton. Its full title was subsequently displayed on its masthead as West Indian Gazette and Afro-Asian Caribbean News (WIG). She continued to edit the paper, which became a key 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): that “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.”
Relative: Trevor Carter
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudia_Jones accessed 19/03/2022
https://www.cumberbatch.org/index.php/forum/2-welcome-to-the-cumberbatch-forum accessed 19/03/22
https://theculturetrip.com/europe/united-kingdom/england/london/articles/claudia-jones-communist-black-activist-and-mother-of-notting-hill-carnival/ accessed 19/03/2022
https://libquotes.com/claudia-jones accessed 19/03/2022
