Claudia Jones was born Claudia Cumberbatch in February 1915 in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad. When she was six years old, her parents left her and her three sisters with family and traveled to Harlem, New York in search of work and a better life. Instead what they found was a racist country whose opportunities were not extended to either Black immigrants or Black Americans.
Disappointment turned into tragedy only a few short years after arrival. Jones’ mother Minnie Cumberbatch died at work from spinal meningitis. The disease was often transmitted in places with poor circulation and hygiene and overcrowding.
Disease would hit the Cumberbatch family again when Jones was struck with her second bout of Tuberculosis at 18. Jones was sent to Seaview Hospital in Staten Island to convalesce. She recounted her time in the hospital in an autobiographical letter that has served as an important source for historians and those interested in Jones’ life. In it she recounted an incident at Seaview when she volunteered to donate blood to a fellow patient, but others warned the woman that she might turn Black if she took Jones’ blood.
Growing up in Harlem, Jones was exposed to different Black radical political ideologies. Trinidadian immigrants made up the majority of Caribbean immigrants in Marcus Garvey’s United Negro Improvement Association, and Trinidad had one of its largest branches. Jones spent some time in a Black Nationalist organization, but chafed against sexist attitudes among some of its members. She was eventually drawn to the Communist Party and joined in 1936. Later in life she would tell a judge that it was her experience with US racism that led to her radicalization and her life long career as a communist.
Denise Lynn, Ph.D. 