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Joe Reilly (center background in green shirt) performs Wednesday at Boggs School. (Facebook photo by Laura De Palma)
Tributes are celebrating veteran Detroit activist Grace Lee Boggs, whose 100th birthday is Saturday.
Students and educators at the Boggs School, a charter school on the near east side, had a two-hour event Wednesday afternoon with speakers, a video a singer-songwriter and reflections on Boggs' freedom-fighting legacy.
"From Rebellion to Revolution" is the topic of a discussion from 10 a.m. to noon today at the Boggs Center, 3061 Field St.
A free public event takes place Friday at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, which hosts a 6-10 p.m. open house celebration with a video, refreshments and presentations about the centenarian's contributions to local civil rights and labor movements.
Grace Lee Boggs at the Packard Plant in a 2013 documentary scene. She's is in the National Women’s Hall of Fame and Michigan Women’s Hall of Fame.
In a post about the museum party, Matthew Lewis of Model D sketches the honoree's background:
Grace Lee Boggs is a name most Detroiters should know. For the last 75 years, Ms. Boggs has been a leader in the labor, black power, and civil rights movements in the city and beyond, influencing generations of activists along the way. . . .
Born in 1915 in Providence, R.I.,, Grace Lee Boggs earned a Ph.D. in philosophy from Bryn Mawr College before eventually moving to Detroit. She and her late husband James, a former auto worker and revolutionary author, rubbed shoulders with the likes of C.L.R. James and Malcolm X as they developed their own political and social philosophies.
She has honorary doctorates from the University of Michigan, Wooster College, Kalamazoo College and Wayne State University, and is in both the National Women’s Hall of Fame and Michigan Women’s Hall of Fame.
A 2013 documentary, "American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs," was shown nationally on PBS last June.
Friends and associates of the couple in 1995 created the Boggs Center near East Grand Boulevard and Mack Avenue "to honor and continue their legacy as movement activists and theoreticians," its website says, adding:
Our aim is to help grassroots activists develop themselves into visionary leaders and critical thinkers who can devise proactive strategies for rebuilding and respiriting our cities and rural communities from the ground up, demonstrate the power of ideas in changing ourselves, our reality, and demystify leadership.
