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Grace Lee Boggs

Grace Lee Boggs sitting on a couch, smiling

Article Draft for Grace Lee Boggs

Grace Lee Boggs (June 27, 1915 – October 5, 2015) was an American author, social activist, philosopher, and feminist. She is the author of five books on revolution, activism, and her life.

She is regarded as a key figure in the Asian American Movement and Socialist Movement.

She is known for her years of political collaboration with C. L. R. James and Raya Dunayevskaya in the 1940s and 1950s. In the 1960s, she and James Boggs, her husband of some forty years, took their own political direction. 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 and published by the University of California Press. She is regarded as a key figure in the Asian American Movement.

Early Life

Grace Lee Boggs was born on June 27, 1915, in Providence, Rhode Island, 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 from Taishan, Guangdong in Qing dynasty China. Chin Lee and Yin Lan Ng immigrated from China to the United State city of Seattle, Washington in 1911.sibling include one sister, Katherine, and four brothers, Edward, Philip, Robert, and Harry.

When Boggs was 8, her family moved to Jackson Heights in Queens, New York.

Partnership with James Bogg

In 1953, Grace Lee Boggs married James Boggs, an American political activist and auto worker.

Education

Boggs was awarded a scholarship to Barnard College of Columbia University. She graduated in 1935.

Boggs continue her education at Bryn Mawr College and received her Ph.D. in philosophy in 1940. Her dissertation was on George Herbert Mead.

Activism

Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership

opened 1995

Boggs was the subject of an FBI file that investigated the roles of the Black Panthers and Black Nationalist movements. When her files were released, it revealed comments speculating Boggs is "probably Afro-Chinese".

Detroit Summer

founded 1992 (check this date)

James and Grace Lee Boggs School

opened 2013

Grace Lee Boggs autographing 'Living for Change' at the Chinese Cultural Center

Works

Books

• Revolution and Evolution in the Twentieth Century. (with James Boggs). (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974).
• Conditions of Peace: An Inquiry: Security, Democracy, Ecology, Economics, Community (EXPRO Press, 1991)
• Living for Change: An Autobiography (University of Minnesota Press, 1998)
• The Next American Revolution (University of California Press, 2012)
• Conversations in Maine. (with James Boggs, Freddy Paine, and Lyman Paine) (University of Minnesota Press, 2018)

Published Writings Under Ria Stone Pseudonym

• There is Only One Real Solution -- Socialism!

• The Crisis of the Educational System in America (The Militant, Vol. XII(3), 1948)

Interviews and Appearances

She participated in the Conference on Activism, Ethnic Studies, Diaspora and Beyond held at Northwestern University in 2005, which was later reprinted in CR: New Centennial Review. Her speech "On Revolution: A Conversation Between Grace Lee Boggs and Angela Davis" held on March 2, 2012, at the Pauley Ballroom, University of California, was excerpted in the journal Race, Poverty & the Environment.

Biopic

• American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs

A portrait by Mike Alewitz of Grace Lee Boggs in his "We Follow The Path Less Traveled The City at The Crossroads of History" mural series.

Grace Lee Boggs and James Boggs contributed to the founding of the National Organization for an American Revolution (NOAR), which, among other things, published activist literature.