Claudia Jones
Claudia Vera Jones 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". Due to the political persecution of Communists in the US, she was deported in 1955 and subsequently lived in the United Kingdom. Upon arriving in the UK, she immediately joined the Communist Party of Great Britain and would remain a member for the rest of her life. In 1958, she founded Britain's first major Black newspaper, the West Indian Gazette, and from 1959 she organised a series of indoor Caribbean carnivals that have been cited as an influence on what became the Notting Hill Carnival, the second-largest annual carnival in the world.
Early life
Claudia Vera Cumberbatch was born in Belmont, Port of Spain in Trinidad, which was 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 disease caused irreparable damage to her lungs leading to lengthy stays in hospitals throughout her life. She graduated from Wadleigh High School, despite leaving for a year due to convalescence.United States career
Despite Jones being academically bright, being classed as an immigrant woman severely limited her 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 weekly column called "Claudia Comments" for a Black nationalist newspaper in Harlem, with a circulation of about 4,000–5,000 readers. She discovered that the editor had passed her writing off as his own, and she became "critical of the newspaper and its leadership".In 1936, after hearing the Communist Party's defence of the Scottsboro Boys and witnessing the American Communist movement's opposition to the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, she joined the Young Communist League USA. She went on to work on the YCL newspaper, the Weekly Review—first as a writer, and then as an associate editor, editor, and ultimately editor-in-chief. One of her earliest articles at the Weekly Review was a review of Richard Wright's 1940 novel Native Son. Among frequent article topics were prominent Black figures such as athletes, and calls to end Jim Crow. She wrote multiple weekly columns, including "Quiz"—answering frequently asked questions—and "The Political Score", covering current political events. Her writing during these years is described as aligning closely with official party positions, in contrast with her more individually developed stances later in her life. It has also been described as taking a Black nationalist angle and emphasizing racial issues.
She also later became state education director and chairperson for the YCL. She represented the YCL at the Second World Youth Congress at Vassar College.
After the Young Communist League USA became American Youth for Democracy during World War II, Jones became editor of its monthly journal, Spotlight. After the war, Jones became executive secretary of the Women's National Commission and secretary for the Women's Commission of the Communist Party USA. Her work in the CPUSA Women's Commission included giving lectures and organizing women's chapters of the party. In 1952, she took the same position at the National Peace Council. In 1953, she took over the editorship of Negro Affairs.
Black feminist leader in the Communist Party
As a member of the Communist Party USA and a Black nationalist and feminist, Jones made her main focus the creation of "an anti-imperialist coalition, managed by working-class leadership, fueled by the involvement of women."Jones focused on growing the party's support for Black and white women. Not only did she work towards getting Black women equal respect within the party. Jones also worked for getting Black women, specifically, respect in being a mother, worker, and woman. 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 in the party of theoretical training of women comrades, the organisation of women into mass organisations, daytime classes for women, and "babysitter" funds to allow for women's activism.
"An End to the Neglect of the Problems of the Negro Woman!" (1949)
Jones's best-known work, "An End to the Neglect of the Problems of the Negro Woman!", published in 1949 in the magazine Political Affairs, exhibits her development of what later came to be termed "intersectional" analysis within a Marxist framework. In the article, Jones theorized a "layered" oppression faced by Black women due to race, gender, and economic status, concluding that advocacy for Black women was integral to the broader fight for social justice.Building on Marx's theory of exploitation, Jones introduces the concept of "super-exploitation" of women, particularly Black women, who she describes as "the most oppressed stratum in the United States". In the article, she concludes that Black women are systematically pushed out of most productive industries and confined to low-paying employment, using income statistics from northeastern American cities evidencing the racial pay gap. According to Jones' analysis, the income disparity, compounded by other exploitative practices like high rents, further increased economic burdens on Black women and contributed to pervasive social and health issues among Black people, such as high maternal and infant mortality rates. Jones also makes a feminist argument against the exploitation of marginally employed Black women by their husbands, arguing that misogynistic dynamics within Black families allowed Black men to feel greater agency in a racist society. Simultaneously, she argues for the importance of Black women within their families will necessarily increase their militancy.
A section of the article is devoted to the continuous damage incurred by white chauvinist ideology, embodied in southern lynchings and what she terms "legal lynchings" in the north. Ingram also criticizes her fellow progressives for ingrown racism, noting the exclusion of Black women by white and Black party cadres and moves by white communist families to stymie integration between the black and white youth. Ingram concludes that the struggle for Black women's liberation is instrumental to the partnership of the Black and white working classes for equality and the defeat of "Wall Street imperialism". She notes the development of domestic workers unions and the then-contemporary case of Rosa Lee Ingram as urgent areas for development on the issue of Black women's rights.
The article was widely read and increased Jones' profile within CPUSA, bringing women's rights to the forefront of the party's activism. Widely regarded as a landmark text within the tradition of Black feminism, one scholar has gone as far as to identify it as the origin of cohesive Black feminist thought.
Deportation
An elected member of the National Committee of the Communist Party USA, Jones also organised and spoke at events. As a result of her membership of CPUSA and various associated activities, in 1948 she was arrested and sentenced to the first of four spells in prison. Incarcerated on Ellis Island, she was threatened with deportation to Trinidad.Following a hearing by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, she was found in violation of the McCarran Act for being an alien 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. She was ordered to be deported on 21 December 1950.
File:Claudia Jones and Betty Gannett.jpg|thumb|left|upright=1.2|Jones and Betty Gannett in a police wagon in New York City after their bail was revoked, July 17, 1951
In 1951, aged 36 and in prison, she suffered her first heart attack. That same year, she was tried and convicted with 11 others, including her friend Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, 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 magazine Political Affairs 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.
She was refused entry to Trinidad and Tobago, in part because the colonial governor Major General Sir Hubert Elvin Rance 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, at Harlem's Hotel Theresa, 350 people gathered to see her off.