Founds the West Indian Gazette, Britain's first major Black newspaper

In September 1958, in the immediate aftermath and context of the Notting Hill race riots, Claudia Jones founded the West Indian Gazette (formally the West Indian Gazette and Afro-Asian Caribbean News), widely recognized as Britain's first major Black community newspaper of the post-war era.

The paper served as a vital platform for political organizing, cultural affirmation, and anti-racist advocacy for the growing Caribbean and African diasporic community in Britain, at a time when mainstream British media largely ignored or misrepresented Black lives and concerns. Jones used the Gazette to cover anti-colonial struggles across Africa and the Caribbean, labor issues, and racial discrimination in housing and employment in Britain, while also fostering a sense of transnational Black solidarity.

This was a genuine barrier-breaking first: no comparable Black-led, Black-focused newspaper of similar scale and political ambition had existed in Britain before. The Gazette became a training ground and mouthpiece for a generation of Black British activists and helped lay institutional groundwork for later Black British press and political organizing. It remains one of Jones's most enduring legacies, cementing her reputation as a foundational figure in Black British civic life.