I didn’t know what I was expecting the Boggs Center to look like, but it definitely wasn’t one house amongst many others in a residential neighborhood; the house’s red and brown exterior gave no hints of the electric conversations and discussions happening within its walls. The Boggs Center, founded in the 1990s by friends of Grace Lee and James Boggs and located in Detroit, Michigan. Grace Lee Boggs, born in 1915 to Chinese immigrants, just recently left us in 2015 with a legacy I can’t begin to give justice to in less than 400 words.
Boggs lived life as an activist and philosopher. She went to study at Barnard College then received her Ph.D. from Bryn Mawr College. Taking on a job at the University of Chicago Philosophy Library, Boggs became involved in the Workers Party (advocated for a branch of socialism) and in the African American community. In 1953, she married fellow activist and from then on, lifelong partner, James Boggs. After moving to Detroit, the couple continued to focus on the Civil Rights Movement and Black Power Movement (Boggs worked with figures such as Malcolm X). In the following years, Boggs and her husband both wrote a number of books while focusing on community activism in Detroit. Grace Lee’s life is documented in the film, American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs (2013).
Along with 10 other Georgetown students on an Alternative Spring Break, I went on a Boggs Center tour around Detroit. I saw firsthand the development of factories in Detroit throughout the ages simultaneously caused the distancing of modes of production from communities. Gates went up, and community interests were pushed aside with the arrival of capitalistic interests (see: 1981 demolishing of Polish community in Detroit to make room for a General Motors Detroit/Hamtramck Assembly plan). Our tour guide stressed a society ruled by militarism, materialism, and racism, the last of which shares an intimate relationship with capitalism.
The Detroit wind was particularly brutal, and this coupled with learning about a change in thinking to combat the worsening effects of privatization and capitalism, once itself a progressive ideal, made it hard to completely digest everything I was hearing. But I can say that the visit left me uncomfortable in the best way possible, like having someone describe the trends I’ve been seeing but at the same time propose a solution: rebuilding our communities from the ground up.
For more information on Grace Lee Boggs, James Boggs, and the activists continuing their legacy, please visit http://boggscenter.org . The Boggs Center is a non-profit community organization aiming to help activists through providing a space for development of ideas and strategies, with the goal of rebuilding communities from the ground up.