London community organisation, BTWSC/African Histories Revisited, will mark the 58th anniversary of the passing of Claudia Jones with an online conference this Saturday, entitled ‘Repairing Histories 2: Commemorating Claudia Jones @58’. The aim of the Repairing Histories conferences, which mixes academic and community historians, is to have papers that improve or expand the knowledge of the subject, mainly by highlighting the little-known aspects of that history, or challenging the received wisdom.
For example, it will be posited that Jones was many things, but founder of Notting Hill Carnival was not one of them. The conference will cover Global African and British African history, framed around the British, US and international histories of Jones.
Prof Carole Boyce Davies presents a paper entitled 'Claudia Jones In The Context British & Global African History'; history PhD student Tionne Parris' paper is entitled 'Claudia Jones: A Titan Among Radical African Female Radicals'; whilst community historians and independent researchers Cecil Gutzmore and Kwaku cover 'Claudia Jones: A Communist In The US & UK' and 'Claudia Jones: In My Own Words Reimagined' respectively.
There will be space for participants to engage in a plenary moderated by community activist Nana Asante. Jones, who died alone in her north London flat on Christmas day in 1964, seems to have lived markedly different lives in the US and UK.
In the former, she was mainly into women's affairs and was a very active and highly ranked member of the Communist Party USA. She was deported from the US because of her CPUSA affiliation to the UK in December 1954.
During her time in the UK, from the mid-1950s until her death, she became a leading activist, fighting for the rights of the post-War African community, women's and worker's rights, a pan-Africanist and internationalist. Incidentally, Jones was one of the subjects of last Repairing Histories 1 in June 2021, along with pan-African icon Marcus Garvey.
The interest in Jones then led to the solo follow up this weekend, which is the only online event marking the anniversary of Jones' death. The zoom conference takes place takes place between 1 and 4pm GMT.
