Highgate Cemetery - Claudia JONES

Claudia Jones is a was a Trinidad-born journalist and activist,  born in 1915 she then moved to Harlem at the age of 8. However, Unfortunately, it was cut short by Tuberculosis and the damage to her lungs and her severe heart disease followed Claudia for the rest of her life.

At the young age of 18 she joined the Young Communist League, she herself explained that

“It was out of my Jim Crow experiences as a young negro woman, experiences likewise born of working-class poverty that led me to join the Young Communist League and to choose the philosophy of my life, the science of Marxism-Leninism — that philosophy not only rejects racist ideas, but is the antithesis of them.”

Already at such a tender age, the young woman understands the exploitation and oppression that is faced. By 1948 she had become the editor of Negro Affairs for the party's paper the Daily Worker and had evolved into an accomplished speaker on human and civil rights. Her best-known piece of writing, 'An End to the Neglect of the Problems of the Negro Woman!' appeared in a well-known magazine (which can be read here) in the article she writes that 

'The low scale of earnings of the Negro woman is directly related to her almost complete exclusion from virtually all fields of work except the most menial and underpaid, namely domestic service'

Jones here is clearly to identify the oppression black women face, where not only is the earnings low but the available fields of work are ones which are psychically exhausting. Her success continued as she was editor of the party’s paper, a regular national speaker on civil and human right issues, and she became the National Director of the Young Communist League when she was aged 25 However, they somehow deemed her as being too politically radical and imprisoned her several times. She was deported from the USA and gained asylum in Britain in 1955, she spent her remaining years working with London's African-Caribbean community. She then founded and edited The West Indian Gazette the founder and editor of the first black British weekly newspaper, The West Indian Gazette.  This newspaper was an important aspect of Jones’ struggle for equality for black people.

Subsequently after the Notting Hill Riots in 1958 and the murder of Kelso Cochrane, Jones helped to launch the Notting Hill Carnival in 1959 - The ‘Mardi Gras’ event was to be an annual event for Caribbean talent and to present the culture of the Caribbean to the people of Britain and form a union between cultural diversities.The slogan 'A people's art is the genesis of their freedom' was used regularly to showcase how Jones believed that to achieve liberation, one must embrace their arts 

If it is not evident enough, this woman is bound by nothing; its unfortunate that she is not spoken about enough though she did so much for the movement. The fact that she is buried next to Karl Marx is an appropriate but not nearly as appreciative of her work

Claudia Jones