Throughout her lifetime, Claudia Jones organized where she lived, at the point where multiple struggles and forms of oppression came together. Her activism embraced the fight against colonialism, agitation for workers’ rights (and especially the rights of black women workers), and opposition to racism both domestic and international. She asserted the right of black women to play a role in those struggles as theorists and intellectuals.

Born in Trinidad and Tobago in 1915, Jones joined the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) in the 1930s and was the only black woman ever elected to its central committee. In 1952–53, the US authorities put her on trial for being a communist.

She became a political prisoner in 1955 for the stated offense of having delivered a speech entitled “International Women’s Day and the Struggle for Peace” on International Women’s Day in 1950. Having served ten months of a one-year sentence in the women’s penitentiary at Alderson, West Virginia, Jones was released in October 1955 after numerous petitions on her behalf for health reasons.