Claudia Jones was born February 21, 1915 in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad. At the age of 18, Claudia became a member of the Young Communist League. It was at this juncture that Jones became in the international movement to defend the Scottsboro Boys. Claudia Jones was a Communist for her entire adult life and a leader in several major movements that marked the twentieth century. These included: the African American liberation movement in the United States, the international Communist movement, the struggle for the rights of women, the battle for world peace, and the Caribbean fight for independence and unity. Jones’s consistent stand against exploitation and oppression and her advocacy of socialism and world peace did not go unnoticed by the United States Government during the McCarthy era. Jones was arrested in 1948 and incarcerated for six months. She was arrested again in 1955 and subsequently sent to Federal prison. Since she never gained U.S. citizenship, Jones was deported from the United States to England where she immediately became involved in the various struggles of the West Indian community and other nationally oppressed groups. Claudia Jones died on Christmas Day, 1964. Quite fittingly Claudia Jones is buried in Highgate Cemetery next to the grave of Karl Marx.

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