Claudia Jones

Claudia Vera Jones was a political activist, feminist, and black nationalist.

Born Claudia Vera Cumberbatch in Port of Spain, Trinidad, on February 21, 1915, she immigrated to Harlem with her family at age eight. Experiencing racism, poverty, and the death of her mother early in life, Jones turned to political activism as a teenager, joining the Communist Party USA in 1936. She began working as a writer for the Young Communist League USA’s newspaper, the Weekly Review, working her way up to editor-in-chief.

During and after World War II, Jones held editorial and other positions with several organizations associated with the Communist Party and labor, housing, and anti-racism campaigns. In 1949, she published the influential essay “An End to the Neglect of the Problems of the Negro Woman!” which argued that Black women faced triple oppression—race, gender, and class—an early description of what later became termed “intersectionality”—and needed to be central to social justice movements.

Jones was arrested during the McCarthy-era Red Scare and served several prison sentences for “un-American activities.” She was deported to the United Kingdom in 1955. There, she founded the West Indian Gazette, one of the first major Black British newspapers, and helped organize the first Caribbean carnival in London, laying the foundation for the Notting Hill Carnival.

Jones died in London on December 24, 1964. She is buried to the left of Karl Marx in Highgate Cemetery.