MEET CLAUDIA JONES

 Join me in learning more about black citizens who have contributed so much to our country. Today we will meet Claudia Jones (1915 Tobago-1964) , journalist and political activist. Ms Jones and her family hailed from Trinidad emigrating to NYC when she was 9 years old. 

Claudia Jones's accolades started early when she was awarded the Theodore Roosevelt good citizenship award in junior high. Unfortunately her mother died when she was 14 and never saw the woman she would become.

 Due to poor living conditions Ms Jones was stricken by TB at age 20 which plagued her the remainder of her life. Academically bright she had limited possibilities as an immigrant black woman. But even with laundry and retail jobs she started writing a column called Claudia Comments in a Harlem paper.

Ms Jones joined the Young Communist League,  supported the Scottsboro Boys, joined the editorial staff of the Daily Worker and by '38  became editor of the Weekly Review, then the Spotlight during WWII and afterwards executive secretary of the Women's National Commission, secretary for the Women's Commission of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). She was incarcerated for her voice and participation numerous times. 

"Jones' focus was on creating "an anti-imperialist coalition, managed by working-class leadership, fueled by the involvement of women." She is  best known for her '49 article "An End to the Neglect of the Problems of the Negro Woman!"

excerpt:

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.

 

In 1951 she suffered her first heart attack in prison. In '52 she took the same position at the National Peace Council. In 1953, she took over the editorship of Negro Affairs. 

 Jones was deported in '55 due to her politics. Her native country Trinidad was afraid she would be troublesome so it was the United Kingdom which became her new home. In spite of being shunned for being black by British journalists, she founded the first major black newspaper in Britain, the West Indian Gazette. 

She found purpose supporting the British African-Caribbean community to organizing both access to basic facilities, as well as the early movement for equal rights.[

An incredible determined woman for sure leaving this world at age 49 after a massive heart attack...