Journalist, publisher and activist, Jones argued that the emancipation of Black women required attending to how they were synergistically “triply oppressed”, economically, racially and sexually, so that any emancipatory struggle could not be directed only to one facet but must simultaneously attend to all three oppressions and their interplay to succeed a foundational concept to what has become known as intersectionality. Jones' was also uniquely militant in her advocacy for de-colonialisation and anti-imperialism, supporting the military development of China against the “peaceful coexistence” doctrine of the USSR, asserting that full emancipation of oppressed nations would only come with their full technological – implicitly military – development. In this session we will read from Jones' political writing and her poetry accompanied by observations from her biographer Carole Boyce Davies exploring the historical context in which Jones' became a prominent communist activist and close colleague to many of the great luminaries of her time such as WEB Du Bois, Paul & Eslanda Robeson, CLR James, Louise Thompson Patterson, Elisabeth Gurley Flynn and many others universally respected for her militant dedication to Black emancipation, internationalism and anti-imperialism.

readings

The West Indian Gazette: Claudia Jones and the black press in Britain By Donald Hinds

Carole Boyce Davies and Claudia Jones: radical Black female subjectivity, mutual comradeship, and alternative epistemology Charisse Burden-Stelly

Read in session

Claudia Jones: We Seek Full Equality for Women

Red Monday: The Silencing of Claudia Jones in 20th Century Feminist Revolutionary Thought by Lydia Lindsey

Claudia Jones: Women for Peace and Security

Baruch's slides

Ch. 5 from Schwarz-Cohen's More Work for Mother on “failed” alternative modernities