This short article will illuminate the connectivity of Black radical women’s activism, as those highlighted in this piece operated not only in the United States, but in Britain (and many other countries). This brief snapshot of their work shows that the role they played in organising against the status quo, which in their day was blatant racial segregation, as well as economic inequality, has often been overlooked in both US and UK historical writing. Their erasure has left us with an incomplete picture of Black liberatory activism, especially in Britain. Importantly, women like Claudia Jones, Vicki Garvin and Louise Thompson Patterson began their activism through political and union organising and continued to prioritise the interlinked issues of class, race and gender throughout their lives. Their contributions to progressive movements are instructive and should be taken as a guide to action for those of us in the 21st century today.
Black radical women were deeply entrenched in Communist Party USA (CPUSA) organising in the 1930s and 1940s. Claudia Jones was a leading theoretician who joined the CPUSA in 1936 in New York, and she quickly rose through the ranks of the Party. Her contributions were significant because she proposed that more attention should be given to the ‘triple oppression’ of Black women in America. For Jones, this meant paying attention to the special conditions of Black women in America, which intersected across the lines of race, class and gender. Yet, Jones was not alone in her position, and she was in fact part of a network of Black women who similarly advocated for better conditions for Black women. They also advocated more broadly for increased rights for Black people and workers of all kinds. For Black radical women these issues were fundamentally interlinked.
Alongside working within the CPUSA on its various campaigns, Black radicals branched out and created Black-led organisations and initiatives to rally support for progressive causes. In the first issue of Freedom newspaper, a radical newspaper founded in part by the actor and activist Paul Robeson, Vicki Garvin wrote a blistering article about the conditions of Black workers in America. Like Jones, who was a fellow comrade in the New York CPUSA, Garvin expanded on the oppression of working Black women. Garvin detailed that Black women were often exploited by those who employed them as domestic workers. They earned only $13 per week and were forced into dirty and less desirable jobs. They also worked abnormally long hours; often working for families and getting home so late that they missed seeing their own children after a day of gruelling work. Using these examples, Vicki Garvin underscored that ‘It can be readily seen that raising the level of women generally and Negro women, in particular, is an acid test for democracy in this crucial point in history.’
In another article for Freedom, published in 1955, Garvin wrote that it was the solidarity amongst workers that had led to the anti-communist backlash: ‘As this unity of Negro and white fighters for democratic America develops, it strikes fear into the hearts of men in high places in government and industry.’ Many Black workers formed their own organisations, and in 1952 Vicki Garvin also became a key contributor to the National Negro Labor Council (NNLC) which led national campaigns seeking fair employment for Black workers. The NNLC reached 5,000 members at its peak and over 30 branches across the United States in its short run as an organisation, from 1950 to 1956, until it came under fire for its perceived affiliation with Communists. But although Garvin praised the solidarity she witnessed between workers, various union bosses retreated from tackling issues of racial inequality in their organisations, and instead left ardent Communists and progressives to spearhead campaigns for desegregation.
One major casualty of the rampant anti-communism in the 1950s was Claudia Jones, as Jones was deported from the United States in 1955. Yet, she arrived on British shores at a time of great racial strife and was well-placed to respond with her organising experience. Initiatives like the Caribbean Labour Congress (CLC) already existed but had only a limited impact. Jones also had extensive experience as a writer and journalist, so she founded her own newspaper The West Indian Gazette and Afro-Asian News (WIG) in 1958. Prominent members of the CLC like Billy Strachan, Trevor Carter and Henry Gunter began to work alongside Claudia Jones and the WIG. Importantly, for migrants experiencing relentless racism and discrimination in Britain, the WIG served as a conduit to share their concerns. It was also a guide to action.
The WIG platformed regional and national issues and reported on new waves of solidarity amongst people across Britain. Henry Gunter often wrote his articles from a Birmingham perspective, and the result of the push for mobilisation led to multi-racial solidarity. Like the solidarity Garvin had praised in the 1950s, one article detailing legislation to ban migrants stated that the Pakistani Workers Association, West Indian Workers’ Association, and many other groups had all joined together to protest. Instances of these workers’ alliances could be seen throughout the Gazette’s run.
One of the most significant legacies of Jones in Britain was her mobilisation against the colour bar. She had cut her teeth with the CPUSA in America protesting segregation, so she was skilled in gathering people to protest against the unspoken rules that affected the economic and social lives of Black and brown people in Britain. Taking inspiration from the United States, in the case of the Montgomery Bus Boycotts, in 1963 the Bristol Omnibus Company were boycotted until they agreed to hire Black and Asian drivers. Two of Jones’s comrades, Billy Strachan and Trevor Carter, reflected on her influence on the protests stating that she had asked activists whether they had thought longer-term than simply gaining employment. She pushed them to request positions of authority: ‘What about being made inspectors?’ To this, Carter was incredulous, ‘we had never even foreseen, because we thought we’d achieved a hell of a lot just getting the job.’ Jones was truly a radical. She was not happy with piecemeal and reformist offerings, and instead urged protestors to demand much more.
In her final years, Claudia Jones had also travelled across Asia to build a common cause with international protestors. When Jones unexpectedly died in December 1964, the WIG tributes showed the immense impact of her work in Britain. A memorial issue of the WIG in 1965 pictured a gathering for her under the headline, ‘People of all races pay homage.’ Although the Second Red Scare had fragmented radical activism in the United States from the 1950s onwards, the transnational work of women like Claudia Jones showed the persistence of Black radicals in the face of persecution. They endured, and subsequently were able to rally once more for the emancipation of Angela Davis in 1971.
Angela Davis was arrested in late 1970, after being falsely implicated in a botched hostage situation in Marin County, California. As a somewhat infamous Black radical of the 1970s, Davis had attracted the ire of anti-communists already, and her addition to the FBI’s Most Wanted list further elevated her persecution. Thus, in 1971, Louise Thompson Patterson sojourned through Britain on a tour for the campaign to free Angela Davis. In 1971, she appeared in the University of Birmingham’s March issue of Redbrick, a student magazine, under the headline ‘Tenuous Evidence Against Davis.’ In her statement to the students, Patterson argued vehemently that Davis had been unjustly imprisoned. For veteran activists like Louise Thompson Patterson, who was by then in her eighties, the persecution of Angela Davis was a contemporary evolution of the ordeal Black women like Claudia Jones had faced in the 1950s. Naturally, as a surviving elder of anti-communist repression, Patterson simply could not stand by and watch.
As well as collecting £6 in donations from the Birmingham campus, Louise Thompson Patterson also spoke with Trade Union Committees in Manchester, with one event hosted at the local West Indian Community Centre. Reigniting Claudia Jones’s earlier efforts, where Jones had fostered solidarity amongst African and Caribbeans in Britain under the umbrella of socialist organising, the centre advertised the event and its cause with boldness: ‘Angela Davis is Black and a Communist, it’s as simple as A.B.C… A mighty campaign needs to be waged for her freedom.’ The leaflet also underscored the strategies exemplified by Patterson and other radicals throughout their lives who believed that ‘the battle for freedom and democracy and against racialism is worldwide.’
In a speech tailored specifically for ‘the British public’, Louise Thompson Patterson made her case for the emancipation of Davis, and emphasised the collective responsibility of workers, as citizens, and humanity across the world to fight for justice and freedom. Again, linking the case to liberation struggles throughout the world, Patterson showed how Davis’s case was part of a much broader struggle that had been waged throughout the 20th century.
What can we learn from the lives and legacies of Jones, Garvin and Patterson? I argue that their activism provides a guide to action for the 21st century. Their examples show that individually, and as a network, they worked towards the empowerment of women and the self-determination of Black people throughout the African diaspora. Black radical women in this network were crucial interlocutors between the US and UK struggles for Black liberation, and they consistently built transnational alliances to bolster the struggle of workers around the world. Ultimately, our histories are intertwined. This knowledge is power, and it strengthens our bonds and our common fight against the many struggles we face today.