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The ‘Founding Spirit of Notting Hill Carnival’ will be commemorated with a blue plaque | Heritage

The woman is described as the “founding spirit” of the company Notting Hill Carnival will be commemorated this year with a blue plaque at her former home in London.

Claudia Jones, a feminist, political activist and journalist who was born in Trinidad in 1915, is one of five women whose achievements and legacies will be honored by the English. Heritage. The sixth blue plaque will be in memory of violinist Yehudi Menuhin.

Jones came to the UK in 1955 from the US, where her activities as a member of the Communist Party during the McCarthy era led to her imprisonment and deportation. At her sentencing, she said she was committed to fighting “for complete and unequivocal equality for my people, the Negro people, which, as a Communist, I believe can only be achieved in alliance with the cause of the working class.”

Black people in the US have been subjected to the “bitter shame and humiliation of second-class citizenship, a special status that makes a mockery of our government’s blustery claims of a ‘free America’ in a ‘free world,'” she said.

In Britain, Jones founded the first major black British newspaper, the West Indian Gazette, and spoke at trade union meetings and peace rallies. She came up with a Caribbean carnival Londonthe first event was held at St Pancras Town Hall in January 1959. It later moved to the streets of west London and became known as the Notting Hill Carnival.

Jones died in 1964 at the age of 49. Her tombstone in North London’s Highgate Cemetery describes her as “a valiant fighter against racism and imperialism who dedicated her life to the advancement of socialism and the liberation of her own black people”.

The blue plaque will be placed on the home in Vauxhall, south London, where she lived for four years.

English Heritage will also celebrate two suffragettes, Emily Wilding Davison and Princess Sophia Duleep Singh.

Davison, one of the most famous women’s suffragettes, was repeatedly imprisoned, where she was kept in solitary confinement and force-fed during hunger strikes. She died from injuries sustained when she ran in front of a royal horse in the Derby in 1913. Her memorial plaque will mark the house in Kensington, west London, where she lived while studying.

Princess Sophia, who was the daughter of the deposed Maharaja Dulip Singh and goddaughter of Queen Victoria, used her royal title to campaign for women’s rights as a member of the Women’s Civil and Political Union. Her plaque will be placed on the house near Hampton Court Palace where she lived with her sisters.

Another plaque will commemorate Marie Spartali Stillman, who was a model for Pre-Raphaelite artists including Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones. She was also a painter and one of a small number of professional female artists of the late 19th century. A memorial plaque will be placed on a house in Clapham, south London.

Ada Salter became mayor of Bermondsey in 1922 – the first Labor woman to be elected mayor in Britain. By the end of her term, health services and laundries had sprung up in south London, new housing and playgrounds had been planned, and thousands of trees had been planted. Her memorial plaque will be installed at her home in Southwark.

Menuhin, probably the most famous violinist of the 20th century, founded two music schools and became a mentor to young musicians. His plaque will be on the Belgravia home in central London where he lived, worked, entertained and practiced yoga for the last 16 years of his life. He died in 1999.

William White, architectural historian and now chairman of English Heritage’s Blue Plaques group, said: “From Emily Wilding Davison, who died for her cause, to Claudia Jones, whose lifelong struggle for social justice inspired Notting Hill Carnival , these are people who have made a difference, and it is an honor to play a part in making sure their contributions are remembered.”

English Heritage usually awards around 12 plaques a year to commemorate individuals of “great public standing”. In 2016, the organization called for nominating only women, as it turned out that it was only 13% of blue plaques in London were dedicated to female figures.

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/jan/26/claudia-jones-founding-spirit-notting-hill-carnival-blue-plaque-london-home-english-heritage

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