An African American born and raised in Alabama, Jimmy Boggs migrated to Detroit in the 1930s and worked for three decades as an autoworker and labor organizer. An organic intellectual, his book The American Revolution (1963) has been widely read by radicals within the US and around the globe.
From back of book American Revoution 1963
"James Boggs, born in Marion Junction, Alabama in 1919: never dreamed of becoming President or a locomotive engi- neer. He grew up in a world where the white folks are gentle- men by day and Ku Klux Klanners at night. Marion Junction is in Dallas County where as late as 1963, although Negroes made up over 57 percent of the total county population of 57,000, only 130 Negroes were registered voters. After graduating from Dunbar High School in Bessemer, Alabama, in 1937, Boggs took the first freight train north, bumming his way through the western part of the country, working in the hop fields of the state of Washington, cutting ice in Minnesota, and finally ending up in Detroit where he worked on WPA until the Second World War gave him a chance to enter the Chrysler auto plant. He has been an auto worker ever since, and a rebel for as long as he can remember. The American Revolution has been translated into French, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, Catalan, and Portuguese."

The daughter of Chinese immigrants, Grace Lee earned a Ph.D. in philosophy but dedicated her life to movement building. She remains highly active as a writer, public speaker, and community organizer. Grace and James co-authored the political classic Revolution and Evolution in the Twentieth Century (1974) and Conversations in Main (with Lyman and Freddy Paine in 1978). Her autobiography Living for Change was published in 1998 and her weekly column "Fresh Ideas"appears in the Michigan Citizen Newspaper.

Note: more information about these books is available in the Ideas section of the website.

Grace Lee Boggs is an activist, writer  and speaker whose sixty years of political involvement encompass the major U.S.  social movements of this century:  Labor, Civil rights,  Black Power, Asian American, Women's and Environmental Justice.

Born in Providence, R.I. of Chinese immigrant parents in l915,  Grace received her B.A. from Barnard College in l935 and her Ph.D. in Philosophy from Bryn Mawr College in l940.  In the l940s and l950s she worked with West Indian Marxist historian C.L.R.James  and in l953 she came to Detroit where she married James Boggs,  African American labor activist, writer and strategist. Working together in grassroots groups and projects, they were partners for over 40 years until JamesÕ death in July l993.    Their book, Revolution and Evolution in the Twentieth Century,  was published by Monthly Review Press in l974.

In l992, with James Boggs and others, she founded DETROIT SUMMER, a multi-cultural, intergenerational youth program to rebuild, redefine and respirit Detroit from the ground up which completed its ninth season in June 2000. Currently she is active in the Detroit Agricultural Network, the Committee for the Political Resurrection of Detroit, writes for the  weekly Michigan Citizen. 

Her autobiography, Living for Change,  published  by the University of Minnesota Press in March l998, now in its second printing, is widely used in university classes on social movements and autobiography writing.

In May 2000 she received a Discipleship Award from Groundwork for a  Just World; in June the Distinguished Alumna Award from Barnard College; and in July the Chinese American Pioneers Award from the Organization of Chinese Americans.  A plaque in her honor is displayed at the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York.