Grace Lee Boggs: Chinese American who fought for civil rights and black power, dies at 100
She was the daugther of Chinese immigrarnts who dedicated her life to serving and advocating for the rights of others
Grace Lee Boggs, the daughter of Chinese immigrants who would become a part of the labour, civil rights, black power, women’s rights and environmental justice movements in America, has died. She was 100.
Boggs and late husband James Boggs were involved in advocacy for decades. She helped organise a 1963 march in Detroit by the Reverand Martin Luther King Jr. and the November 1963 Grassroots Leadership Conference in Detroit with Malcolm X.
Her death was announced by the James and Grace Lee Boggs Centre to Nurture Community Leadership, which she set up after her husband’s 1993 death.
“Grace died as she lived surrounded by books, politics, people and ideas,” Alice Jennings and Shea Howell, two of her trustees, said.
In a statement released by the White House, President Barack Obama said Boggs learned early that “the world needed changing, and she overcame barriers to do just that".
“Grace dedicated her life to serving and advocating for the rights of others - from her community activism in Detroit, to her leadership in the civil rights movement, to her ideas that challenged us all to lead meaningful lives,” the president said.
Boggs was born in Rhode Island in 1915 and grew up in New York City. After receiving a doctorate in philosophy from Bryn Mawr College in 1940, Boggs worked at the University of Chicago’s Philosophy Library.
Boggs moved back to New York to work with socialist theorist C.L.R. James, helping create an offshoot of the Socialist Workers Party that focused on race and poverty.
She moved to Detroit in the 1950s to write for a socialist newspaper. That’s where she met James Boggs, an African-American man who would become her husband and collaborator.
Boggs was the subject of a 2013 documentary, American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs, that aired on the Public Broadcasting Service.
