Civil rights & activism / Literature
Grace Lee Boggs
1915–2015 · activist, philosopher, author
Chinese American philosopher and activist who lived on Detroit's East Side for 62 years, shaping Black Power, labor and community-renewal movements.
- Born
Providence, Rhode Island- Died
Detroit, Michigan
aged 100- Birth name
- Grace Chin Lee
- Detroit years
- 1953–2015
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Grace Lee was born in Providence to Chinese immigrant parents and earned a philosophy doctorate at Bryn Mawr in 1940. Radical politics brought her to Detroit in 1953, where she married James Boggs, a Chrysler autoworker and writer, and the couple made their East Side home on Field Street a hub for civil rights and Black Power organizing. Living in Detroit, she said, shaped their thinking about automation, capital flight and racism. She helped found the Detroit Asian Political Alliance in 1970, and as the city emptied out she turned to rebuilding from the ground up: in 1992 she founded Detroit Summer, a multiracial youth program of gardens, murals and neighborhood repair. The Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership still works from the house. She died there in 2015 at 100; the James and Grace Lee Boggs School opened in 2013.
Highlights
- Ph.D. in philosophy from Bryn Mawr College (1940)
- Founded Detroit Summer youth program (1992)
- Co-founded the Detroit Asian Political Alliance (1970)
- Author of The Next American Revolution (2011)
- National Women's Hall of Fame (1999)
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 2
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Lived here · 1960s–2015
Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership (Boggs house)
The East Side house where James and Grace Lee Boggs lived and organized for decades; it now serves as headquarters of the Boggs Center.
Memorial · 2013–
James and Grace Lee Boggs School
Place-based public charter elementary school named after the couple, opened in 2013.