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Grace Lee Boggs Activist lives for grass-roots change
Pinned above Grace Lee Boggs' desk are words she obviously lives by: Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History. Indeed, the 91-year-old Detroiter has seldom kept quiet as a lifelong community activist devoted to social change in Detroit and among other causes of the 20th and 21st centuries. Her colleagues and numerous awards -- such as her induction into the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, N.Y. -- testify that her fight for justice is legendary. "Grace is probably is one of the most important thinkers to have emerged in the last 50 years in the U.S.," says Shea Howell, chair of Oakland University's journalism department. "She has been an activist and a philosopher. Sometimes you have people who are one or the other. Grace is both. Her insights into the character of the country and into how to help people think where the country needs to go are astonishing." The daughter of Chinese immigrants, Boggs' philosophy is simple -- revolutions start at the grass-roots level. She has used this philosophy while working for decades on numerous political causes, including the labor, civil rights, Black power, and Asian American, women's and environmental movements. Much of her organizing was done with her late husband, African-American labor activist Jimmy Boggs, whom she met when she moved to Detroit in 1953. The couple married during a time when interracial marriages were frowned upon, but that didn't stop their partnership or their numerous lectures at universities, organization of radical groups or struggles against casino gambling and violence in Detroit. When Jimmy Boggs died of lung cancer in 1993, she founded Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership, a nonprofit community center and think tank, to continue the legacy of their work, especially in Detroit. "I believe in Detroit," says Boggs, who also is a writer and speaker. "I have recognized it has an enormous amount to contribute to the future. For me to be part of creating hope in a city which is so grounded in despair is challenging." A native of Rhode Island, Boggs received her Ph.D. in 1940 from Bryn Mawr College in suburban Philadelphia. She lived in New York, Chicago and several other cities before moving to Detroit to work on a progressive newsletter. Though she and her husband didn't have children, Boggs has worked with young people since 1992 through Detroit Summer, a youth program aimed at rebuilding the city. Her most recent project is the Detroit-City of Hope campaign, which will coincide with the 40th anniversary of the 1967 Detroit riot and Martin Luther King's "Break the Silence" speech. The campaign began in April with an event called "Transforming Grief Into Hope." A follow-up meeting is planned July 21 to discuss what has been learned since 1967. "The main thing we need to do in this city is to grow hope," says Boggs, a philosophy she cites frequently in her autobiography, "Living for Change." People who have worked with her can't say enough about her. "Grace is a Detroit hero who has dedicated her life to learning from the people in the community, uniting it with a vision for our city… and always engaging folks in that discussion and in that new concept of citizenship," says friend Rick Feldman. Kim Kozlowski
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Maggie Allesee