Grace Lee Boggs, a longtime civil rights activist, died Monday at her home in Detroit. She was repeatedly credited for her work in the civil rights, black power, labor, environmental justice and feminist movements.
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“I am saddened by the news of Grace’s passing, but I can not help but focus on the courage of a woman who spent her 100 years fighting for true equality, having spent over 50 years organizing with the black community in Detroit”, Honda said.
According to her biography, Lee Boggs was the daughter of Chinese immigrants, who went on to earn a degree from Barnard College in 1935, and a doctorate in philosophy from Bryn Mawr College in 1940.
She had “an extraordinary body of work, a number of books, countless articles, speeches and pamphlets, all probing this idea of how do we develop our humanity”.
“She believed at the core that small groups of people working together are the key to bringing about social change, and she inspired generations of Americans to pursue a dream of a society that is more fair and just”, Congresswoman Debbie Dingell (D-Dearborn) said in a statement.
Just, as he says, Grace.
Her life has been eclectic and diverse.
According to the Boggs Center website, Boggs helped organize the 1963 March Down Woodward Avenue with Dr. Martin Luther King and the Grassroots Leadership Conference with Malcolm X.
Legendary activist, writer and philosopher Grace Lee Boggs has died.
Richard Feldman, a board member with the Boggs Center in Detroit, said the Providence, Rhode Island-born Boggs leaves behind nieces and nephews but had no children of her own.
“I think Grace has stood for the belief that our central question is how to become more human human beings, and the understanding that that happens as we work together on trying to create a world that is sustainable, that’s loving, that’s productive”. She worked for decades with her husband, James, to advance these ideals. And they feel at this time particularly it’s important to live a meaningful life. Progressives, she told Lee, have “overestimated the role of activism and underestimated the role of reflection”.
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It’s the kind of connection Boggs gloried in, Grace Lee said.
