JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Thursday, July 3, 2025

Claudia cumberbatch, a mighty woman

by

20150225

Moth­er of the Not­ting Hill Car­ni­val, Clau­dia Ve­ra Cum­ber­batch in­tro­duced the Not­ting Hill Car­ni­val to Eng­land. Each year over a mil­lion peo­ple cel­e­brate the Not­ting Hill Car­ni­val and very few are aware of Clau­dia's part in its his­to­ry.

As Sat­ur­day's cres­cent moon rose over Caz­abon Street in Bel­mont, peo­ple gath­ered from all over the world to re­mem­ber Clau­dia Ve­ra Cum­ber­batch, bet­ter known as Clau­dia Jones, on the one hun­dredth an­niver­sary of her birth.

There were al­so gath­er­ings in Harlem and Lon­don, but it was the few dozen hold­ing hands in a lamp-lit cir­cle on a rib­bon of rough as­phalt, who got to hear the un­ex­pect­ed­ly beau­ti­ful per­cus­sion of corn and rice rolling like rain off the gal­va­nize roof of her child­hood home, and who wit­nessed the first time that African in­vo­ca­tions, wa­ter, palm oil, mem­o­ries and ap­pre­ci­a­tion were of­fered from us here to this lit­tle known daugh­ter of the soil.

For women busi­ly go­ing about life, or­gan­is­ing com­mu­ni­ties, hand sewing their tra­di­tion­al por­tray­als for Car­ni­val, es­tab­lish­ing their own in­comes, dream­ing of be­ing writ­ers or want­i­ng to make a fair­er world, Clau­dia Jones is the in­spi­ra­tion whose pic­ture you could pin to your clothes, like Bobo Shan­tis do with Haile Se­lassie, to re­mind your­self that ar­tic­u­late, fear­less and pow­er­ful women have long been home grown.

Born in Trinidad, on Feb­ru­ary 21, 1915, Clau­dia Jones be­came the lead­ing black woman in in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­nism be­tween the 1930s and 1950s. While liv­ing in the US, she was ar­rest­ed and im­pris­oned for ten months for giv­ing a speech on "In­ter­na­tion­al Women's Day and the Strug­gle for Peace."

Fac­ing de­por­ta­tion and even­tu­al­ly choos­ing ex­ile to Eng­land in 1955, be­cause Trinidad's Gov­er­nor was too fright­ened of her move­ment-build­ing ca­pac­i­ty to let her re­set­tle here, she or­gan­ised the first Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions in Lon­don. Her be­lief that "a peo­ple's art is the gen­e­sis of their free­dom" es­tab­lished the prece­dent for every Caribbean Car­ni­val now held around the world.

A com­mu­nist, pan-African and women's rights po­lit­i­cal ag­i­ta­tor, more rad­i­cal than any men of her time or re­gion in­clud­ing Mar­cus Gar­vey and CLR James, Clau­dia Cum­ber­batch be­gan to write as Clau­dia Jones to throw the CIA off her tracks, know­ing that the US gov­ern­ment con­sid­ered her a threat.

She was in­domitably bad-ass, cross­ing out the job ti­tle of sec­re­tary that was put on her pass­port, and writ­ing "jour­nal­ist" in­stead, the on­ly right thing to do for an im­mi­grant woman who lat­er wrote for and edit­ed youth, women's, work­ers' rights and African Amer­i­can mag­a­zines, and found­ed her own news­pa­per, The West In­di­an Gazette and Afro-Asian Caribbean News.

Last term, my stu­dents and I read Left of Karl Marx, Ca­r­ole Boyce-Davies' book about Clau­dia Jones' life and pol­i­tics, mar­vel­ling that she even met Chi­na's Mao Tse-tung and Mar­tin Luther King Jr. I want­ed them to know that when Caribbean stu­dents learn about transna­tion­al, an­ti-im­pe­ri­al­ist, an­ti-racist fem­i­nist the­o­ry, we don't start with US Black fem­i­nism and An­gela Davis or Third World fem­i­nism and Chan­dra Mo­han­ty, and we don't start in the 1960s.

We start decades ear­li­er, in Bel­mont, with the think­ing of Clau­dia Jones, an ac­tivist, in­tel­lec­tu­al, cul­tur­al work­er and writer with­out any de­grees to her name, now buried in Lon­don, to the left of Karl Marx in High­gate Ceme­tery.

Yet, even hav­ing taught her book, it nev­er oc­curred to me to turn on­to the lane where she walked as a child and to look up at the same moon she would have seen, on her birth­day. It did oc­cur to those who in­vit­ed the na­tion to ho­n­our a woman who died, at 49 years old, alone on Christ­mas day.

By putting pas­sion and pen to our prin­ci­ples, mak­ing trans­for­ma­tion of black work­ing class women's lives our mark­er of change, and un­apolo­get­i­cal­ly pur­su­ing equal­i­ty and eman­ci­pa­tion for all, may we might­i­ly walk in the foot­steps of the path-break­ing Clau­dia Jones.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored