• DOI:10.14321/JSTUDRADI.8.2.0001
• Corpus ID: 161970928

Socialist Feminism and Triple Oppression: Claudia Jones and African American Women in American Communism

@article{Lynn2014SocialistFA,
  title={Socialist Feminism and Triple Oppression: Claudia Jones and African American Women in American Communism},
  author={Denise Lynn},
  journal={Journal for the Study of Radicalism},
  year={2014},
  volume={8},
  pages={1 - 20}
}

• D. Lynn
• Published 21 July 2014
• History
• Journal for the Study of Radicalism

N ext to Karl Marx’s grave in London’s Highgate cemetery is the grave of Claudia Jones (1915–1964), who was an unassuming yet ferocious civil rights and Communist leader. Claudia Jones spent her entire adult life working within radical working-class and black nationalist organizations formulating an internationalist ideology that encompassed feminism, black nationalism, and Marxism. She envisioned herself and others of African descent in a struggle against capitalism and colonialism. Jones also synthesized a link between black nationalism and feminism that would later be adopted by a younger generation of feminists. Additionally, she linked the black diaspora to third-world struggles in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and the Americas. Jones’s life ended early because of lifelong illness, and she has largely been remembered, when remembered at all, in regards to her contributions to black nationalism, communism, and third-world struggles. But Jones’s ideology and practice provides a unique insight into the “difference” feminism of American Communist women at mid-century. Unfortunately, at the height of Cold War domestic hysteria in the United States, Jones was forced to focus her energies on a futile struggle to prevent her deportation. DENISE LYNN