Grace Lee Boggs: A Warrior for the World1. Define humanity in your own words.
"The struggle we're dealing with these days, which, I think, is part of what the 60s represented, is how do we define our humanity?"
At 91, Grace Lee Boggs has been a part of almost every major movement in the United States in the last 75 years, including: Labor, Civil Rights, Black Power, Women's Rights and Environmental Justice.
Born in 1915 to Chinese immigrant parents, Boggs received her BA from Barnard College in 1935 and her Ph.D. in Philosophy from Bryn Mawr College in 1940. In the 1950's she worked with West Indian Marxist
C.L.R. James, before marrying African American activist, James Boggs, and moving to Detroit in 1953, where she's lived for 54 years.
One of her earliest inspirations was A. Philip Randolph, an African-American labor leader who in 1941 fought successfully for equal hiring practices in defense plants as the United States geared up for WWII. "When I saw what a movement could do I said, 'Boy that's what I wanna do with my life,'" explains Boggs in her interview with Bill Moyers.
In the 1960's, Boggs and her husband became very involved in the Black Power movement, notably offering Malcom X a place to stay whenever he visited Detroit. At this time, she identified much more closely with Malcom X than Martin Luther King Jr. "Like most black power activists, I tended to view King's concepts of non-violence and Beloved Community as somewhat naïve and sentimental," as she describes in her recent speech entitled,
Catching up with Martin."
But in 1967, when race violence gripped the city of Detroit and elsewhere in the nation, Boggs began to see what was missing in the Black Power movement and look toward the example of King as a more effective template for cultural revolution. "We could no longer separate ethics from politics or view revolutionary struggle simply in terms of us vs. them...The absence of this philosophical/spiritual dimension in the Black Power struggles of the 1960s helps to explain why these struggles ended up in the opportunism, drug abuse, and interpersonal violence..."
What the papers called race riots, she called "rebellions," yet it was this pivotal event that helped her to learn that rebellion is not enough. "It was amazing - a turning point in my life, because until that time, I had not made the distinction between a rebellion and a revolution." She extrapolates on this idea in REVOLUTION AND EVOLUTION IN THE 20TH CENTURY, which she wrote with her husband in 1974:
"Rebellions tend to be negative, to denounce and expose the enemy without providing a positive vision of a new future...A revolution is not just for the purpose of correcting past injustices, a revolution involves a projection of man/woman into the future...It begins with projecting the notion of a more human human being, i.e. a human being who is more advanced in the specific qualities which only human beings have - creativity, consciousness and self-consciousness, a sense of political and social responsibility."
Grace Lee Boggs has since dedicated her life to helping to realize King's vision of Beloved Community in her hometown of Detroit and elsewhere around the country, one grassroots protect at a time. In 1992, with James Boggs, who passed away in 1993, Shea Howell and others, she founded
DETROIT SUMMER, "a multicultural, intergenerational youth program to rebuild, redefine and respirit Detroit from the ground up." The organization is coming upon its 15th season this summer.
Her autobiography, LIVING FOR CHANGE, published by the University of Minnesota Press in March l998, is widely used in university classes on social movements. In 2004, she helped organize the Beloved Communities Project, "an initiative begun to identify, explore and form a network of communities committed to and practicing the profound pursuit of justice, radical inclusivity, democratic governance, health and wholeness, and social / individual transformation."
"I think we're not looking sufficiently at what is happening at the grassroots in the country. We have not emphasized sufficiently the cultural revolution that we have to make among ourselves in order to force the government to do differently. Things do not start with governments."
2. What changed in Grace's political views during the 1970's? What does that mean to you?
3. Does Grace rely upon the government for change to happen?
Grace Lee Boggs Video Clip4. Who was Grace Lee Boggs married to? What did she learn from her marriage? How was her marriage illustrative of her work with other communities?
5. Jimmy Lee Boggs said "The Negro in America is not struggling for Democracy, but against it?" What do you feel this means?
6. What did Grace ask Bill Moyers to call the actions of the young people in Detroit instead of a riot? Why did she do this? Do you agree or disagreee and why?
7. Why does Grace want people to rethink the idea of leader? What does she mean by "We are the Ones we've been looking for."
8. If Grace Lee Boggs was in front of you, what 3 questions would you ask this woman who has been part of every major movement in the United States? What 3 things would you want her to know about where you live?
