Blue plaque unveiled in Southwick to mark house where political activist C.L.R. James wrote his magnum opus, The Black Jacobins

History lecturer Dr Christian Hogsbjerg had to do some spy work of his own to uncover the truth and his efforts were rewarded with the unveiling of the blue plaque at 290 Old Shoreham Road on Friday.

A crowdfunding campaign supported by the Southwick Society raised £1,000 for the project to remember the Trinidadian cricket writer and revolutionary historian, and mark the place where he wrote his magnum opus, The Black Jacobins.

Civil rights activist Leila Hassan Howe and publisher Margaret Busby attended the unveiling and spoke movingly of their memories of C.L.R. in Brixton, where another blue plaque marks the home in which he lived and died.

Joe Walsh and Tricia Bagel were delighted to have the second plaque placed on their property and by coincidence, Joe said he used to live near the blue plaque in Railton Road, Brixton.

"I used to walk past it and I never thought than that I would have one the same on my house," said Joe, who has lived in Old Shoreham Road for 12 years.

Dr Christian Hogsbjerg said the property was a guest house in the 1930s when C.L.R. visited. "When he came here he was only in his 30s," he pointed out. "He came here, though, as a leading black intellectual. He had a high public profile already by that stage. I think we can speculate that he came here for a sense of peace and tranquility to get some writing done.

"Without the spying they did and the monitoring of a letter, we would not have known about this address. It is a letter he wrote on July 19, 1937, I.T.A. Wallace-Johnson, who was a pioneering trade unionist from Sierra Leone."

C.L.R. wrote his classic history of the Haitian Revolution, The Black Jacobins, in 1938 while staying on the south coast. In his preface, he described writing it 'in the stillness of a seaside suburb'.

The Haitian Revolution, led by Toussaint Louverture, was the only successful mass slave revolt in human history, which saw the transformation of the colonised slave society of Saint-Domingue into the world’s first independent black republic outside of Africa from 1791-1804.

Margaret's father was at school with C.L.R. James in Trinidad and kept in touch with him all his life. She became a publisher in the 1960s and having discovered works by C.L.R. were out of print in Britain, set about republishing them in a bid to make him better known. Such was her success, by the time the third volume of selected writing was published, Lord Snowdon agreed to do a photograph for the jacket.

Before unveiling the plaque, she said: "Let's hope more people will learn of the really important contribution that C.L.R. has made in terms of his history. C.L.R. was a teacher who learned and a learner who taught, and I think that sums it up completely."

Leila, who lived and worked with C.L.R., spoke of how he had inspired her and her generation, who were 'on the margins', living in appalling conditions and feeling like third class citizens.

"We were young people who were determined that this was not going to happen to us and one of the inspirations for us was to look at our history. That is how we all came across C.L.R. James' book The Black Jacobins. So to come to see a plaque to C.L.R. has tremendous meaning for me."

C.L.R. also published a semi-autobiographical cultural history of cricket in the West Indies, Beyond a Boundary, which The Times described as the 'most finely crafted book on cricket ever written'. This year is the 60th anniversary of the book's publication in 1963.

It is also the 50th anniversary of the formation of The Southwick Society, which runs the Manor Cottage Heritage Centre to celebrate the history of Southwick and its people. Secretary Nigel Divers said he was awary of C.L.R. James but had no idea of his connection with Southwick until Dr Hogsbjerg uncovered the truth.