Grace Lee Boggs

Grace Lee Boggs was a civil rights and labor activist and author.

Boggs was born on June 27, 1915 in Providence, Rhode Island. She was born as "Yu Ping 玉平". She attended Barnard College at Columbia University for her B.A. Following her B.A., she pursued her Ph.D. at Bryn Mawr College, where she received a doctorate in philosophy.

After she graduated, she met and married James Boggs. They both engaged heavily in racial justice efforts. Following her education, she took a job at the University of Chicago in the Philosophy Library. She joined the Workers Party and determined to pursue social and racial justice. She also joined the Johnson-Forest Tendency, a Marxist tendency organization. She translated many texts of Karl Marx's Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 into English. She and her husband founded the National Organization for an American Revolution in 1979. In 1992, she founded Detroit Summer, another racial justice program.

Boggs passed on October 5, 2015, at the age of 100.