The Transformative Legacy of James and Grace Lee Boggs

Grace Lee Boggs and her husband Jimmy were social justice warriors—intellectuals, pioneers, and visionaries. Grace, the child of Chinese immigrants, earned a PhD in philosophy from Bryn Mawr in 1940. But her experiences of racism and her growing involvement in local activism in Chicago led her to dedicate herself to the struggle for racial justice in America. She married James Boggs, a fellow activist, and together they worked for economic and racial justice in Detroit for the rest of their lives, becoming influential thinkers and leaders both locally and on the national stage.
The Boggs Foundation is their legacy. Grace left all of her papers to the Foundation, which will also become the custodian of her and Jimmy's home on Detroit's Eastside. The Foundation is working now with Wayne State University to process the Boggs archives which will become an extraordinary resource for scholars. But Scott Kurashige, the Foundation's director, also hopes the Foundation can carry on with the work that Jimmy and Grace began. He envisions the house becoming a museum and community center which will continue to serve the local community in which the Boggses were an integral part. 
At the same time, he hopes to re-launch the conversations that the Boggses co-hosted with their friends the Paines each summer. These conversations brought movement leaders together, not to strategize, but to wrestle with difficult, fundamental questions about social justice. The new conversations will aim to do the same, bringing diverse leaders together in Jimmy's and Grace's names in Detroit to take up today's critical questions and challenges.
Luce funds will be used to provide operating support for Foundation, to undertake a planning process for the museum, and to hold the first of the new conversations series. This grant advances the democracy initiative's second and third goals, helping to build local community infrastructure and at the same time expand and deepen knowledge about the movement to achieve justice for communities.