Farewell Grace Lee Boggs
06/10/15 05:33
We tend to name centuries by years that end in 00 by our way of counting. So we call this the 21st century. But not every era is defined by beginning and ending points that line up neatly with our somewhat arbitrary system of counting. For many people living in Detroit and the surrounding area, yesterday was the end of the century of Grace Lee Boggs. The 100-year-old community activist died as she wished, at home, surrounded by books, ideas, going peacefully in her sleep.
The daughter of Chinese immigrants, she was born in her family home over her father’s restaurant in Rhode Island. At an early age she moved to New York City where her father owned and operated restaurants. Her father had migrated to the United States, moving away from the economic hardships following the First Opium War of 1839-42. Her Chinese given name means “Jade Peace.” She enrolled in Barnard College at the age of 16, graduated in 1935 and earned a doctorate from Bryn Mawr College in 1940. She had a brilliant mind and might have been a great academician, but there were plenty of barriers for women in academics in the 1940’s. She took a job in the philosophy library of the University of Chicago. That job gave her access to books and ideas and she became an activist, working for a wide variety of causes throughout her life. For many decades, her life’s work focused on the struggles of the African-American community.
In 1953 she married James Boggs, an auto worker and political activist. Their 40-year marriage was a life partnership as well as a political collaboration. Both were involved in many different organizing efforts over the years. James passed away ini 1993. Since his death, Grace has focused her energies on community organization in Detroit. She founded a multicultural intergenerational youth program called Detroit Summer. The program was an outreach of the Boggs Center, founded by their friends in the early 1990’s. The center has served as a hub of community projects including organizing and social activism.
A documentary film, “American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs” was released in 2013.
There will doubtlessly be many articles and tributes over the next week as the community of Detroit mourns here passing and those who were closest to her discover new directions for their energies and activities. Fortunately, many of them had the opportunity to express their tributes directly to her on the occasion of her 100th birthday in June.
She is fascinating to me because of her ability to wrestle with complex ideas and then put those ideas to work. I do not agree with all of her philosophical positions, but I do admire her integrity and commitment to working for others. “I think that too much of our emphasis on struggle has simply been in terms of confrontation and not enough recognition of how much spiritual and moral force is involved in the people who are struggling,” she said in a 2007 interview with Bill Moyers. I am interested in how her ideas and philosophies changed over the course of her life. At one time she was strongly attracted by the ideas of Marxism, but she resigned from her membership in socialist organizations and was deeply influenced by the nonviolence taught by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
She was a complex person. Perhaps we all are.
I never met her. I’ve lived my life at a significant distance from her activities and the causes she championed. But I have a sense that the world is a bit better because she lived and that I have been influenced in some small way by her grace and witness. I note her passing with mixed feelings. On the one hand, the world has lost a brilliant mind and a deep thinker. On the other hand, 100 years is a good long life and it seems natural that the time has come for her to die. She will live on in memory and story, in books and in the continuing work of the Boggs center. Perhaps the revitalization of Detroit, work that has just begun, will be among her most lasting legacies of a life well lived. Time will tell. It may take another century for the changes she envisioned to come to fruition.
Our society needs voices like Grace Lee Boggs to remind us that we have much work that is unfinished. Racial inequality has not been overcome. People still suffer because of systemic injustice. The poor are getting poorer while the rich are growing richer. There are systematic flaws in the organization of our society. Change comes only through deep commitment and the ability to invest in long term solutions. Perhaps that is one of the gifts of the aging years, we begin to develop a patience for projects that are bigger than ourselves and an ability to envision changes that will take longer than the span of our lives to accomplish.
The real tribute to the life and work of Grace Lee Boggs won’t come from the many eulogies and tributes that are being made on the occasion of her death. The real tribute will be in the lives of the people living in Detroit - and all around the world - who engage in grassroots organization and work for sustainable change in the world. The real tribute is only just beginning to be worked out on the streets of Detroit and will take decades to accomplish.
It is good to have shared several decades of life in a world with Grace Lee Boggs. I am fortunate to be blessed with the possibility of several more of observing how her legacy will play out in Detroit and other places.
People who dare to wrestle with complex ideas can make a difference in the world. The philosophies with which we engage are important not just to ourselves, but to many others - some of whom we will never meet face to face.
Farewell, Grace. Your spirit remains in our midst.
The daughter of Chinese immigrants, she was born in her family home over her father’s restaurant in Rhode Island. At an early age she moved to New York City where her father owned and operated restaurants. Her father had migrated to the United States, moving away from the economic hardships following the First Opium War of 1839-42. Her Chinese given name means “Jade Peace.” She enrolled in Barnard College at the age of 16, graduated in 1935 and earned a doctorate from Bryn Mawr College in 1940. She had a brilliant mind and might have been a great academician, but there were plenty of barriers for women in academics in the 1940’s. She took a job in the philosophy library of the University of Chicago. That job gave her access to books and ideas and she became an activist, working for a wide variety of causes throughout her life. For many decades, her life’s work focused on the struggles of the African-American community.
In 1953 she married James Boggs, an auto worker and political activist. Their 40-year marriage was a life partnership as well as a political collaboration. Both were involved in many different organizing efforts over the years. James passed away ini 1993. Since his death, Grace has focused her energies on community organization in Detroit. She founded a multicultural intergenerational youth program called Detroit Summer. The program was an outreach of the Boggs Center, founded by their friends in the early 1990’s. The center has served as a hub of community projects including organizing and social activism.
A documentary film, “American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs” was released in 2013.
There will doubtlessly be many articles and tributes over the next week as the community of Detroit mourns here passing and those who were closest to her discover new directions for their energies and activities. Fortunately, many of them had the opportunity to express their tributes directly to her on the occasion of her 100th birthday in June.
She is fascinating to me because of her ability to wrestle with complex ideas and then put those ideas to work. I do not agree with all of her philosophical positions, but I do admire her integrity and commitment to working for others. “I think that too much of our emphasis on struggle has simply been in terms of confrontation and not enough recognition of how much spiritual and moral force is involved in the people who are struggling,” she said in a 2007 interview with Bill Moyers. I am interested in how her ideas and philosophies changed over the course of her life. At one time she was strongly attracted by the ideas of Marxism, but she resigned from her membership in socialist organizations and was deeply influenced by the nonviolence taught by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
She was a complex person. Perhaps we all are.
I never met her. I’ve lived my life at a significant distance from her activities and the causes she championed. But I have a sense that the world is a bit better because she lived and that I have been influenced in some small way by her grace and witness. I note her passing with mixed feelings. On the one hand, the world has lost a brilliant mind and a deep thinker. On the other hand, 100 years is a good long life and it seems natural that the time has come for her to die. She will live on in memory and story, in books and in the continuing work of the Boggs center. Perhaps the revitalization of Detroit, work that has just begun, will be among her most lasting legacies of a life well lived. Time will tell. It may take another century for the changes she envisioned to come to fruition.
Our society needs voices like Grace Lee Boggs to remind us that we have much work that is unfinished. Racial inequality has not been overcome. People still suffer because of systemic injustice. The poor are getting poorer while the rich are growing richer. There are systematic flaws in the organization of our society. Change comes only through deep commitment and the ability to invest in long term solutions. Perhaps that is one of the gifts of the aging years, we begin to develop a patience for projects that are bigger than ourselves and an ability to envision changes that will take longer than the span of our lives to accomplish.
The real tribute to the life and work of Grace Lee Boggs won’t come from the many eulogies and tributes that are being made on the occasion of her death. The real tribute will be in the lives of the people living in Detroit - and all around the world - who engage in grassroots organization and work for sustainable change in the world. The real tribute is only just beginning to be worked out on the streets of Detroit and will take decades to accomplish.
It is good to have shared several decades of life in a world with Grace Lee Boggs. I am fortunate to be blessed with the possibility of several more of observing how her legacy will play out in Detroit and other places.
People who dare to wrestle with complex ideas can make a difference in the world. The philosophies with which we engage are important not just to ourselves, but to many others - some of whom we will never meet face to face.
Farewell, Grace. Your spirit remains in our midst.