When it comes to the effigy of radical feminist organising and action, names such as Angela Davis and Assata Shakur are prominently displayed. With the hypervisibility of some comes the erasure of others and therein lies the importance of active archiving. Claudia Jones’s name is one that has been relegated to the footnotes of academic articles and sadly, does not extract the same excitement as the heralded Black female activists.

Buried to the left of Karl Marx at the Highgate Cemetery, Jones was instrumental in political action and is described as a feminist visionary. Born in Trinidad in 1915, Jones moved to the United States with her parents when she was eight-years-old. It was a catalyst in the conscientising of Jones who became a communist, political activist, feminist and Black nationalist. Raised by her father following the passing of her mother during the Great Depression, she battled tuberculosis and managed to make an indelible mark in her short life. Jones was observant of the functions of white supremacy and the hierarchical structures that existed in a society that was premised on race in a manner that controlled the public and marginalized Black people, with a specific focus on the location of Black women. At 21, Jones joined the Communist Party and Young Communist League. Between 1948 and 1955, Jones was continually pestered by the FBI and placed under constant surveillance. Described as a Marxist, Jones was a victim of the McCarthy era, and witch hunts that targeted communists. She was detained three times and spent months in prison. She was eventually deported to Britain in 1955 where she continued to challenge the exploitative nature of labour extraction from Black women.

As cited by scholar Charisse Burden-Stelly in an article titled “Why Claudia Jones Will Always Be More Relevant than Ta-Nehisi Coates”, Jones believed that, “white supremacy was not a matter of attitude or morals, but rather of property rights, access to resources, and the hierarchical organization of American society. In fact, she rejected the idea that racism and discrimination were acts of individual choice, and stressed that they were forms of structural domination that needed to be eradicated if liberation for all people was to be achieved.” Aligned with the core principles of the Critical Race Theory, Jones understood race to represent the creation of the hierarchical structure of society. 

Even though she was doubly displaced and without community in Britain, Jones’s voice and activism could not be contained by her illness or white supremacy. The British Communist Party failed to embrace Jones who was considered to be vocal in her identification of race discrimination within the party, illustrating the existence of contradiction within the movement and the importance of intersectional political praxis. She was a prominent figure in the West Indian community and was the founder of Britain’s first major newspaper, the West Indian Gazette. Her contribution to the culture also extended to her being known as the “mother of the Caribbean Carnival” which is otherwise known as the Notting Hill Carnival. From its inception, this festival was intended to exist as a site for celebration in a time where racial discrimination was prominant in Black people’s lives. The carnival was a positive step following the frequent race riots that were the consequence of Afro-Caribbean communities being targeted for allegedly trespassing into predominantly white communities. Her work surpassed boundaries as she was involved in the global fight against racism and lent her labour to the African National Congress in South Africa in 1964. Along with other activists, she was instrumental in the organisation and implementation of a hunger strike against Apartheid and called for the boycott of South Africa and the release of political prisoners. 

Jones participated in the fight to end racism and imperialism while dealing with the precarity of her health. On Christmas Eve in 1964, at aged just 49, she died of a heart attack in her flat in London. Almost two decades later, a headstone has been erected for her with the inscription “Claudia Vera Jones. Valiant fighter against racism and imperialism who dedicated her life to the progress of socialism and the liberation of her own Black People.” 

In her book titled, “Left of Karl Marx: The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones” Carole Boyce Davies states, “The fact that Claudia Jones is buried to the left of Karl Marx in Highgate Cemetery, London provides an apt metaphor for my assertions in this study. Her location in death continues to represent her ideological position while living: this Black woman articulates political positions that combine the theoretics of Marxism-Leninism and decolonisation with a critique of class oppression, imperialist aggression, and gender subordination, thus to the left of Karl Marx.”