She founded Britain’s first major Black newspaper and the carnival that became Notting Hill.
Claudia Jones was born in Belmont, Trinidad, on 21 February 1915, and became a journalist, activist, and Communist Party organiser whose politics spanned two continents.
In the United States she developed the idea of ‘triple oppression’, the intersecting weights of race, gender, and class, and her Communist Party membership led to her deportation under the McCarran Act in 1955. She settled in London and went to work.
In 1958 she founded the West Indian Gazette, Britain’s first major Black newspaper, which reached over fifteen thousand Caribbean readers. After the racist violence in Notting Hill in 1958, she organised a Caribbean carnival at St Pancras Town Hall in January 1959, using culture as a form of resistance and laying the ground for what would grow into the Notting Hill Carnival.
She died on 24 December 1964, aged 49, and was buried near Karl Marx in Highgate Cemetery, her newspaper and her carnival among her lasting works.
Her record is in the West Indian Gazette archive. Her card is in the deck.
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Timeline
- 1915Born in Belmont, Trinidad, on 21 February.
- 1948Became a leading voice on the ‘triple oppression’ of race, gender, and class in the United States.
- 1955Deported from the United States under the McCarran Act, and settled in London.
- 1958Founded the West Indian Gazette, Britain’s first major Black newspaper.
- 1959Organised a Caribbean carnival at St Pancras Town Hall, a forerunner of Notting Hill Carnival.
- 1964Died on 24 December, aged 49.
0 salutes
I salute Claudia Jones, who founded a newspaper and a carnival that still fills the streets.
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