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<h1 id="reader-title">History Will Absolve Her: Little Known
Revolutionary Women</h1>
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<p class="subtitle" itemprop="description
alternativeHeadline">October 12, 2016<br>
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<p class="subtitle" itemprop="description
alternativeHeadline">There is a ‘lost history’ of radical
women and women’s organizing in the Caribbean for social
and economic justice that changed our landscape for more
than a century.</p>
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<p>When we think of great leaders, we think of presidents,
prime ministers and heads of revolutionary movements. In
our collective memory, we sometimes forget the immense
sacrifices of left organizers for social, economic and
political change. Yet, not all revolutionaries and
martyrs are equal. </p>
<p>Working class, non-white, activist, and left women from
the Global South suffer from the greatest invisibility.
There is a ‘lost history’ of radical women and women’s
organizing in the Caribbean for social and economic
justice that changed our landscape for more than a
century. </p>
<p>In what will forever be remembered as the July 26
Movement, a young Fidel Castro led a failed attack
against the Moncada army barracks in Santiago de Cuba in
an attempt to inspire a national uprising against
dictator Batista. While many of his comrades were
slaughtered in the action, the passionate and idealistic
Fidel, in 1954 wrote a lengthy critique of capitalism in
the Isle of Pines prison, decrying the social and
economic ills of Cuba under dictatorial rule instead of
making a defense regarding the charges brought against
him. </p>
<p>In a speech that has been remembered for one of its
precious lines, “History will absolve me,” Fidel Castro
joined the distinguished tradition of revolutionaries
who defended themselves in court by advancing their
radical political beliefs. </p>
<p>One year before Fidel would be absolved by history,
Claudia Jones, made her defense in a U.S. court
challenging the imprisonment she faced because of her
communist beliefs. </p>
<p>Claudia Jones was a prominent Caribbean radical
organizer and thinker to communities in the U.S. and
U.K. Jones combined Marxism-Leninism, decolonization,
anti-imperialist and anti-sexist politics to make sense
of the social and political situation of her day. Carol
Boyce Davies places Jones’ lifelong revolutionary work
into the canon of left radicalism that has too widely
been interpreted in androcentric terms. </p>
<p>Even though we can consider Claudia Jones a "female
political and intellectual equivalent of C.L.R James,
"her omission from historical narratives, including left
scholarship and analysis, has served to undermine the
urgent theorizing of questions concerning women in
general and Black women in the First and Third Worlds. </p>
<p>In 1953, under the Smith Act in the U.S., Claudia Jones
delivered a speech to the court at her trial for
“subversive activities” aimed at overthrowing the U.S.
government. She was sentenced to a year in jail, and
afterward, was deported. Her speech to the court was one
of rhetorical brilliance. In a section of her speech,
she questions the logic of her sentencing through a
series of questions that illustrate the irrationality
and oppressive character of the charges brought against
her. </p>
<p>She expresses her political beliefs against the war in
Korea, against the alienation of workers under
capitalism and her support for freedom of speech. She
described the trial as a “trial of ideas.” Jones stands
firm in her convictions fearlessly, "I say these things
not with any idea that what I say will influence your
sentence of me. For, even with all the power your Honor
holds, how can you decide to mete out justice for the
only act to which I proudly plead guilty, and one,
moreover, which by your own prior rulings constitutes no
crime—that of holding Communist ideas" </p>
<p>Before Fidel and his case against the economic and
social misery of Cuba, before Claudia and her communist
convictions, Elma Francois, a domestic worker and labor
organizer, on sedition charges, defended herself.
Francois was born in St. Vincent and migrated to
Trinidad and Tobago as a worker in 1919. She began as a
domestic worker. </p>
<p>She joined the Trinidad Workingman’s Association. Her
militancy grounded in Garveyite consciousness and
working class politics put her at odds with the
leadership of Captain A. A. Cipriani who led the TWA.
Later, Elma Francois founded the Negro Welfare Cultural
and Social Association (NWCSA), a Marxist-oriented labor
organization that sought the empowerment of primarily
‘Negro people’ but recruited non-Afro members as well. </p>
<p>What made this organization stand out from many other
organizations in Latin America and the Caribbean at the
time was Elma Francois’ commitment to the notion that
there should be no sex separation in the executive
structure of the NWCSA. She was vehemently against the
establishment of a “women’s arm/auxiliary” as a
substitution for greater equality in the labor
leadership.</p>
<p>
Elma Francois was the first woman in the history of
Trinidad and Tobago tried for sedition in 1938. During
her self-defense, Francois outlined the outlook of the
Negro Welfare Cultural and Social Association and its
commitment to the development and empowerment of the
oppressed ‘Negro people’ of the West Indies. She then
drew on examples of international struggles and
discerned what is most to her cause, she cited, for
example, land struggles in Kenya and workers'
mobilizations in the U.K. </p>
<p>More poignantly, she argued that workers are concerned
with transforming their material conditions above all
else, "I said that hundreds of workers were being placed
in jail. I said that jail sentences and executions do
not solve our problems. It is only by organized unity
that we can … better our conditions … I said workers of
the world were not prepared to fight in any way but for
bread, peace and liberty." Unlike Claudia Jones,
eventually, she was found not guilty.</p>
<p>
The parallels among Francois, Jones and Fidel are as
remarkable as they are unsurprising. All these
revolutionaries on trial linked their causes to broader
struggles of workers against exploitation of the ruling
classes internationally and expressed their political
beliefs fearlessly in defense of intellectual and
political freedom. In this sense then, Claudia Jones and
Elma Francois belong to a long radical tradition of
revolutionary self-defense and are deserving of
historical absolution. </p>
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