Grace Lee Boggs | |||||||||||
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 Boggs at her home in Detroit in 2012 | |||||||||||
| Born | Grace Chin Lee (1915-06-27)June 27, 1915 Providence, Rhode Island, U.S. | ||||||||||
| Died | October 5, 2015(2015-10-05) (aged 100) | ||||||||||
| Other names | Ria Stone | ||||||||||
| Education | Barnard College (BA) Bryn Mawr College (MA,PhD) | ||||||||||
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| Movement | Johnson–Forest Tendency(1941–1951) | ||||||||||
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| Chinese name | |||||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 陈玉平 | ||||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 陳玉平 | ||||||||||
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Grace Lee Boggs (June 27, 1915 – October 5, 2015) was an American author, social activist, philosopher, andfeminist.[1] She is known for her years of political collaboration withC. L. R. James andRaya Dunayevskaya in the 1940s and 1950s.[2] In the 1960s she and her husband,James Boggs, took their own political direction, turning their focus to civil rights and Black Liberation, Asian American, and other social justice movements.[3][clarification needed] By 1998 she had written four books, including an autobiography. In 2011, still active at the age of 95, she wrote a fifth book,The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century, with Scott Kurashige, published by theUniversity of California Press. She is regarded as a key figure in theAsian American,Black Power, andCivil Rights movements.
Boggs was born Grace Lee Chin[4] on June 27, 1915, inProvidence, Rhode Island, above her father's restaurant. Her Chinese given name was Yu Ping (玉平), meaning Jade Peace. She was the daughter of Chin Lee (1870–1965) and his second wife, Yin Lan Ng. Both her parents were originally fromTaishan, Guangdong, inQing dynasty China.[5] Boggs's siblings include one sister, Katherine, and four brothers: Edward, Philip, Robert, and Harry. Chin Lee and Yin Lan Ng immigrated from China to the United States city ofSeattle, Washington in 1911.
Early in her career, Boggs translated Karl Marx's works and was actively involved in several leftist organizations, including theWorkers Party, theSocialist Workers Party, and theTrotskyist movement. She later collaborated with revolutionaries like C. L. R. James and Raya Dunayevskaya in intricate dialectical analyses, describing the Soviet Union in various terms such as a "degenerated workers' state" or a "state capitalist system".
On a scholarship, Boggs went on to study atBarnard College ofColumbia University, where she was influenced by Darwin's concept of evolution.[6] She graduated in 1935 and then in 1940 received her Ph.D. in philosophy fromBryn Mawr College, where she studied withPaul Weiss and wrote her dissertation onGeorge Herbert Mead.[7]
In 1953 Grace Lee Boggs marriedJames Boggs, an American political activist and auto worker. They were married for 40 years until James Boggs' death in 1993. Together they published activist literature, books, and founded theNational Organization for an American Revolution (NOAR).[8][9][10]
Interviewed byIbram X. Kendi about his joint biography of them, Stephen M. Ward states that together, Grace Lee Boggs and James Boggs "built a durable partnership that was at once marital, intellectual, and political. It was a genuine partnership of equals, remarkable not only for its unique pairing or for its longevity, but also for its capacity to continually generate theoretical reflection and modes of activist engagement."[8]
Facing significant barriers in the academic world in the 1940s, she took a low-paying job at theUniversity of Chicago Philosophy Library. As a result of their activism on tenants' rights, she joined the revolutionary leftWorkers Party, known for itsThird Camp position regarding theSoviet Union, which it saw asbureaucratic collectivist. At this point, she began the trajectory that she would follow for the rest of her life: a focus on struggles in the African-American community.[11]
She metC. L. R. James during a speaking engagement inChicago and moved to New York. She met many activists and cultural figures such as authorRichard Wright and dancerKatharine Dunham. She also translated into English many of the essays inKarl Marx'sEconomic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 for the first time. She soon joined theJohnson–Forest Tendency led by James,Raya Dunayevskaya and Lee. They focused more centrally on marginalized groups such as women, people of color and youth as well as breaking with the notion of the vanguard party. She wrote for the Johnson–Forest Tendency under the party pseudonymRia Stone. While originally operating as a tendency of the Workers Party, they briefly rejoined theSocialist Workers Party before leaving the Trotskyist left entirely, forming theCorrespondence Publishing Committee in 1951.[12] She married African-American auto worker and political activistJames Boggs in 1953.
That same year she and James moved toDetroit, where they continued to focus onCivil Rights andBlack Power Movement activism. As scholar Brian Doucet articulates in his interview conducted with Boggs in 2014: "Living in Detroit influenced the Boggs' thinking on the role of automation, capital flight, and racism."[13] Boggs helped found the Detroit Asian Political Alliance in 1970.[14]
When C. L. R. James and Raya Dunayevskaya split in the mid-1950s intoCorrespondence Publishing Committee led by James andNews and Letters led by Dunayevskaya, Grace and James supported Correspondence Publishing Committee that James tried to advise while in exile in Britain. In 1962, the Boggses broke with James and continued Correspondence Publishing Committee along withLyman Paine andFreddy Paine, while James' supporters, such asMartin Glaberman, continued on as a new if short-lived organization,Facing Reality. The ideas that formed the basis for the 1962 split can be seen as reflected in James Boggs's book,The American Revolution: Pages from a Black Worker's Notebook. Grace unsuccessfully attempted to convinceMalcolm X to run for the United States Senate in 1964. In these years, Boggs wrote a number of books, includingRevolution and Evolution in the Twentieth Century with her husband and focused on community activism in Detroit where she became a widely known activist.
In 1979, Grace Lee Boggs and husbandJames Boggs contributed to the founding ofNational Organization for an American Revolution (NOAR).[15]
In the introduction to an extensive interview, scholarKarín Aguilar-San Juan describes one aspect of Boggs' activism: "Although she believes that racial and gender inequality will always demand struggle, Grace remains adamant that civil- rights- based activism will not lead to the farreaching changes in society that a higher state of human evolution requires." She goes on to explain that Boggs' "political path" has been "guided by her study of global and historical change, hand- in- hand with daily participation in and observation of the struggles of people at the grassroots level." In this interview Boggs discusses her relationship to her Asian American heritage, her experience with the Black Power movement, and many other topics.[14]
She foundedDetroit Summer, a multicultural intergenerational youth program, in 1992, and was the recipient of numerous awards. Additionally, Boggs' home in Detroit also serves as headquarters for the Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership. The Boggs Center was founded in the early 1990s by friends of Grace Lee and James Boggs and continues to be a hub for community-based projects, grassroots organizing, and social activism both locally and nationally.[16]
Grace Lee Boggs died on October 5, 2015, at 100 years old.[17][18] An obituary inThe New York Times reported that Boggs "waged a war of inspiration for civil rights, labor, feminism, the environment and other causes for seven decades with an unflagging faith that revolutionary justice was just around the corner."[19]
PresidentBarack Obama issued a statement on Bogg's death, praising her work for Detroit and for "her leadership in the civil rights movement, to her ideas that challenged us all to lead meaningful lives." He added that Boggs "understood the power of community organizing at its core".[20]
Her other books include Revolution and Evolution in the Twentieth Century (1974, co-authored with James Boggs), Women and the Movement to Build a New America (1977), Living for Change: An Autobiography (1998), and The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century (2011, co-authored with Scott Kurashige).
| External videos | |
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 Grace Lee Boggs interviewed onDemocracy Now!, January 20, 2008 | |
| Grace Lee Boggs interviewed by Bill Moyers, June 15, 2007 | |
| Boggs on the Financial Meltdown and Social Change – video report byDemocracy Now! | |
| "The Only Way to Survive is By Taking Care of One Another" – video report byDemocracy Now! |
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