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AMPLIFY: Redefining Activism with Grace Lee Boggs

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The great socialist, feminist, and community activist Grace Lee Boggs once said, “You cannot change any society unless you take responsibility for it, unless you see yourself as belonging to it and responsible for changing it.”

Grace Lee Boggs was a social activist and feminist known for rejecting stereotypes and revolutionizing community organizing. Born in Rhode Island in 1915 to Chinese immigrants, Boggs spent her adult life as an activist, fighting for tenants’ rights, working with the Socialist Workers Party, and participating in the civil rights movement, such as in the 1941 March on Washington. Boggs’s activism and studies focused on marginalized communities. Writers Kant, Hegel, and Herbert Mead (one founder of symbolic interactionism) influenced her views on life and activism. Their theories on the relationship between reason and human experiences challenged how she saw herself and others, leading her toward community organizing. With a BA from Barnard College (1935) and a PhD in philosophy from Bryn Mawr College (1940), she worked with countless civil rights figures, developed a system of solidarity between Asian and Black Americans, and embodied what it means to be an activist.

Grace Lee Boggs’s love of activism began while living in Chicago, where she joined the movement for tenants’ rights, and, subsequently, the Workers Party. Growing up in predominately White spaces, she experienced firsthand the struggles against racism and the difficulties of finding a job. Employers who “wouldn’t hire Orientals” often shunned her. She found a job working at the University of Chicago for below minimum wage, so far below that her only choice of housing was in a basement. Her experiences in Chicago led her to her first activist role. She began working with community members who also lived in poor conditions. Boggs and community leaders organized to expand tenants’ rights. Later, she joined the far-left Workers Party and worked with notable activists like Raya Dunayevskaya and C. L. R. James—whom she met at an event in Chicago. She collaborated with both activists on many political initiatives, including the Johnson-Forest Tendency and the radical Correspondence Publishing Committee.

Boggs moved to Detroit in the 1940s to help publish the Correspondence newsletter. That’s where she met prominent activist and autoworker James Boggs. Both worked with C. L. R. James and Raya Dunayevskaya to edit the bimonthly publication; the four of them became notable activists in Detroit for their labor and civil rights movement that intersected with environmental justice issues. Grace and James married in 1953 and continued to work together with feminist organizations, the Black Power movement, and the Asian American movement. Boggs chronicled their work in Revolution and Evolution in the Twentieth Century, which focused on community activism in Detroit. Living in Detroit (also known as Motor City), the couple was highly influenced by the work of autoworkers and union members. They focused their energy on community activism and combating racism.

Six Things to Know about Grace Lee Boggs

  1. She was a critical figure in the Asian American Movement.

  2. She translated some of Karl Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 from German to English (1950s).

  3. She was a noted figure in Detroit’s Black Power movement

  4. She participated in the Walk to Freedom alongside Martin Luther King Jr., and worked with Malcolm X (whom she tried to convince to run for Senate in 1964).

  5. She helped found the Detroit Asian Political Alliance in 1970.

  6. She and her husband created Detroit Summer (1992), a multiracial and intergenerational collective focused on empowering the youth to improve their community. 

Facts about James Boggs

  1. He played a crucial role in the radical wing of the civil rights movement.

  2. He partnered with civil rights activists Malcolm X and Ossie Davis.

  3. He worked on countless civil rights and Black Power papers and publications, such as Racism and the Class Struggle: Further Pages from a Black Worker’s Notebook.

Known for questioning everything and collaborating with various communities and movements, Grace Lee Boggs rejected the stereotypical ideas of capitalism and what it meant to be a part of a movement. Boggs instead centered her activism around the human experience and how people can transform their world and community. After James Boggs died in 1993, Grace became even more active in community engagement and activism. At seventy-eight, she was still training and organizing future activists. In 2005, she began writing a weekly column on community organizing and the importance of getting involved in politics, economic justice, and social movements. Boggs’s activism focused on global solidarity. She believed in grassroots organizing and a person’s ability to rebuild and care for the community.

Why We Amplify

Grace Lee Boggs believed that the only way “we survive [is] by taking care of each other.” As a community organizer, Boggs developed a community-building practice that is used today—a practice that is transforming the systems of power and inclusivity in movements. As an Asian American woman, not only did she help expand the reach and involvement of Asian Americans in social justice movements, but she also challenged the status quo by shifting the idea of who and what leadership looks like in a social movement. In her memoir, Living for Change, Boggs spoke about her struggles as an Asian American woman, her experiences in the civil rights movement, and her fight for economic, racial, and social justice. Boggs was an activist until the end. At one hundred years old, she hoped and strove for a better tomorrow.

She died in 2015, leaving behind perseverance, human connectivity, intersectionality, and fifty-five years of community organizing in African American and Asian American communities. She spent her life campaigning and focusing on marginalized communities, specifically on people of color and women. From anti-war movements fighting for tenants’ rights to organizing with Black autoworkers in Detroit, Boggs did it all. We amplify her ability to see the struggles around her and create a system for global solidarity and change.

I will leave you with my favorite quote of Grace Lee Boggs, hoping this inspires the fire within you:

“People are aware that they cannot continue in the same old way but are immobilized because they cannot imagine an alternative. We need a vision that recognizes that we are at one of the great turning points in human history when the survival of our planet and the restoration of our humanity require a great sea change in our ecological, economic, political, and spiritual values.”

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Joycelyn lives in Cypress, Texas. She’s the daughter of immigrants and did not go to law school, but she received three degrees (BA, MA, MPH) and is happily freelancing and working in the nonprofit world. She enjoys writing about healthcare recruitment and even worked as a Healthcare Organizer. When she’s not writing, she’s transcribing, developing community toolkits, and researching womxn’s history. Which is why she’s excited about writing for AMPLIFY. On her off days, she spends her time on Twitter, reminding everyone to drink water and enabling others to watch more dramas. Follow her on Twitter: @jg_humanitarian