Claudia Jones

Agora

Claudia Jones

1915–1964

A first way ina deliberate simplification – the portrait says more

Claudia Jones held that Black women in the United States are “superexploited” at once as workers, as Black people and as women; because they are the most oppressed, their struggles are central to labour, Black and women’s movements, which have neglected them.

Placement

African & Africana Philosophy · Latin America & Caribbean · Politics & Law, Society & History, Gender & Feminism

Journalist and communist from Trinidad who grew up in Harlem: in 1949 she argued that Black women in the United States suffer a “superexploitation” as workers, as Black people and as women, and that their struggles are central to every movement for liberation; deported to Britain in 1955, she founded the West Indian Gazette and helped start the Caribbean carnival in London.

Key ideas

The superexploitation of Black women
Race, class and gender together
Black women at the centre of liberation
Anti-imperialism from the Caribbean diaspora

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Influence

Influenced by 1

Karl Marx

influenced by
Claudia Jones analysed the “superexploitation” of Black women as workers, as Black people and as women in Marxist terms, as a member and theorist of the Communist Party. C. Jones, “An End to the Neglect of the Problems of the Negro Woman!”, Political Affairs (June 1949); C. Boyce Davies, Left of Karl Marx (2008)
Evidence: AI draft
Karl Marx › 1818–1883

Influenced 1

Angela Davis

influenced
Davis drew on Claudia Jones in Women, Race and Class (1981), presenting her as a dedicated communist for whom socialism alone promised liberation for Black women. A. Davis, Women, Race and Class (1981); C. Boyce Davies, Left of Karl Marx (2008)
Evidence: AI draft
Angela Davis › b. 1944

Works

1949An End to the Neglect of the Problems of the Negro Woman!
Essay in the journal Political Affairs: as domestic workers and in industry, Black women are paid least and organised least; their “superexploitation” as Black people, as women and as workers makes their struggles central to the labour, Black and women’s movements, which have neglected them.

Position

Claudia Jones is on the map as a Marxist theorist of the intertwined oppression of Black women, decades before the term intersectionality. In “An End to the Neglect of the Problems of the Negro Woman!” (1949) she argued that Black women in the United States are the most exploited part of the working class: concentrated in domestic service, paid less than white women and Black men, and largely left out of the labour movement, they suffer a “superexploitation” as Black people, as women and as workers. This position, she held, makes them not only victims but the most militant and decisive force in the struggles for labour, for Black liberation and for women’s rights, and she criticised the Communist Party, white women and Black men for neglecting them and for repeating stereotypes such as that of the “mammy”. In London she connected these ideas with the anti-colonial movements of the Caribbean, Africa and Asia and with the struggle against racism in Britain, holding that culture, too – the press, the carnival – is a means of the oppressed to assert themselves. Angela Davis drew on her in Women, Race and Class (1981); Carole Boyce Davies’s Left of Karl Marx (2008) presented her as a founding figure of Black feminist and diasporic thought, and her analysis is often summed up as a “triple oppression” of race, class and gender.

Life & context

Claudia Vera Cumberbatch was born on 15 February 1915 in Belmont, Port of Spain, in Trinidad. In 1924 her family emigrated to New York, where she grew up in poverty in Harlem; her mother died when she was twelve, and tuberculosis contracted in her youth damaged her health for life. Drawn to the Communist Party by its campaign for the Scottsboro defendants, she joined the Young Communist League in 1936 and took the name Jones. She worked as a journalist and editor for the party press, served on its women’s commission and national committee, and wrote widely on Black women, peace and anti-colonialism. Arrested several times, she was convicted in 1953 with other communist leaders under the Smith Act and served nearly a year in the federal prison at Alderson, West Virginia; in December 1955 she was deported to Britain. In London she founded the West Indian Gazette (1958), organised against racism after the Notting Hill riots, and in 1959 helped stage an indoor Caribbean carnival, a forerunner of the Notting Hill Carnival. She died in London on 24 December 1964 and is buried to the left of Karl Marx’s tomb in Highgate Cemetery.