Interview with Grace Lee Boggs

Abstract

Grace Lee Boggs is an activist, writer and speaker whose 60 years of political involvement encompasses the major U.S. social movements of the 20th century -- labor, civil rights, Black power, Asian American, women’s and environmental justice. A daughter of Chinese immigrants, she was born in Providence, Rhode Island in 1915. In 1953, she came to Detroit where she married James Boggs, labor activist, writer and strategist. Working together in grassroots groups and projects, they were partners for over 40 years until James Boggs’ death in July 1993. The Monthly Review Press published their book, Revolution and Evolution in the 20th Century, in 1974. In 1992, with James Boggs, Shea Howell and others, she founded Detroit Summer, a multicultural, intergenerational youth movement program, to rebuild, redefine and re-spirit Detroit from the ground up. She spreads her ideas by writing a weekly column in the Michigan Citizen newspaper. In 1998, the University of Minnesota Press published her autobiography, Living for Change. Among numerous honors, Boggs has received the distinguished Alumna Award from Barnard College, the Chinese American Pioneers Award, from the Organization of Chinese Americans, and a lifetime achievement award from the Anti-Defamation League. A plaque in her honor is displayed at the National Women’s Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York.