Claudia Jones

Claudia Jones
Born
Claudia Vera Cumberbatch

(1915-02-21)21 February 1915
Belmont, Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago
Died24 December 1964(1964-12-24) (aged 49)
London, England
Resting placeHighgate Cemetery
NationalityTrinidadian
Other namesClaudia Cumberbatch Jones
Occupation(s)Journalist, activist
Years active1936–1964
Known forOrganiser of 1959 Caribbean carnival event, precursor of the Notting Hill Carnival.
Founder of West Indian Gazette, Britain's first major Black community newspaper. Communist activism.
Political partyCommunist Party USA,
Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB)
Criminal chargesCharged under the McCarran Act
Criminal penaltyImprisonment and eventual deportation to the United Kingdom
RelativesTrevor Carter (cousin)

Claudia Vera Jones (née Cumberbatch; 21 February 1915 – 24 December 1964) 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".[1] 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. She then founded Britain's first major Black newspaper, the West Indian Gazette, in 1958, and played a central role in founding the Notting Hill Carnival, the second-largest annual carnival in the world.

  1. ^ Taylor, Jeremy (May 2008). "Excavating Claudia". Caribbean Review of Books.