Grace Lee Boggs
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Grace Lee Boggs (born June 27, 1915) is an author, lifelong anti-racist activist and feminist. She is known for her years of political collaboration with C. L. R. James and Raya Dunayevskaya in the 1940s and 1950s(sometimes using the pen name "Ria Stone"). She eventually went off in her own political direction in the 1960s with her husband of some forty years, James Boggs, until his death in 1993.
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[edit] Biography
Grace Lee Boggs is an activist, writer and speaker whose more than sixty years of political involvement encompass the major U.S. social movements of this century: Labor, Civil rights, Black Power, Asian American, Women's and Environmental Justice.
Born in Providence, R.I. of Chinese immigrant parents in 1915, Grace received her B.A. from Barnard College in 1935 and her Ph.D. in Philosophy from Bryn Mawr College in 1940. In the 1940s and 1950s she worked with West Indian Marxist historian C.L.R.James and in 1953 she came to Detroit where she married James Boggs, African American labor activist, writer and strategist. Working together in grassroots groups and projects, they were partners for over 40 years until James death in July 1993. Their book, Revolution and Evolution in the Twentieth Century, was published by Monthly Review Press in 1974.
In 1992, with James Boggs, Shea Howell and others, she founded DETROIT SUMMER, a multicultural, intergenerational youth program to rebuild, redefine and respirit Detroit from the ground up, which completed its 14th season in the summer of 2006. Currently she works with the Detroit City of Hope campaign and the Beloved Communities Initiative and writes for the weekly Michigan Citizen.
Her autobiography, Living for Change, published by the University of Minnesota Press in March 1998 is widely used in university classes in Asian American studies, on Detroit and on social movements.
Her many awards include:
1993: Human Rights Day Award, Center of Peace and Conflict Studies, Wayne State University.
1998: Zenobia Paine Drake Award, Black Family Development.
2000: Discipleship Award from Groundwork for a Just World.
2000: Distinguished Alumnae Award, Barnard College.
2000: Chinese American Pioneers Award, Organization of Chinese Americans.
2001: Women's Lifetime Achievement, Anti-Defamation League.
2002: Legacy Award, Museum of Chinese in America, New York City.
2004: Grassroots Peacebuilder Award, Peace Action of Michigan.
2004: Senior Celebrity Award, Bridging Communities, Detroit.
2004: Doctor of Humane Letters degree, College of Wooster.
2004: Interfaith Committee on Worker Issues Award.
2004: Lifetime Commitment Award, Michigan Coalition for Human Rights.
2005: Lifetime Achievement Award, Michigan Women's Federation.
2005: Community Honoree Award, WAND (Women's Action for New Directions).
2005: Urban Woman Writer in Residence, Department of Interdisciplinary Studies, Wayne State University.
2005: Lifetime Achievement Award, Detroit City Council.
2007: A Detroit News Michiganian of the Year.
A plaque in her honor is displayed at the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York.
2007 Doctor of Humane Letters degree, Kalamazoo College.
Grace James Boggs Shea Howell and many others founded Detroit Summer, a multicultural intergenerational youth program, in 1992 and has also been the recipient of numerous awards. As recently as 2005, she continued to write a column for the Michigan Citizen newspaper. edited by boggs center
[edit] Bibliography
- Revolution and Evolution in the Twentieth Century. (with James Boggs). (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974).
- Women and the Movement to Build a New America (Detroit: National Organization for an American Revolution, 1977).
- Conversations in Maine: Exploring Our Nation's Future (with James Boggs, Freddy Paine and Lyman Paine). (Boston: South End Press, 1978).
- Living for Change: An Autobiography (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998).
[edit] References
- Paul Buhle, "An Asian-American Tale" Monthly Review (January 1999), pp. 47-50.
- Grace Lee Boggs, Living for Change: An Autobiography (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998).
- Martin Glaberman, "The Revolutionary Optimist: Remembering C.L.R. James", Against the Current #72 (January/February 1998)
- Neil Fettes, "Living for Change" Red & Black Notes, #7, Winter 1999
[edit] External links
[edit] Video
- Grace Lee Boggs interviewed on Democracy Now!, January 22, 2008
