Grace Lee Boggs

March — Women's History Month — is all about celebrating womanhood and the inspirational stories helped pave the way for female empowerment and progress. These advocates and pioneers have contributed incredible things to women's history and the history of the United States as a whole and are an inspiration to young girls everywhere.

Today Pathways would like to honor Grace Lee Boggs, an activist, author, and advocate of equal rights who changed the lives of women and minorities in America. A prominent activist her entire adult life, Grace Lee was born in Rhode Island in 1915, the daughter of Chinese immigrants (AWTT). She studied at Barnard College and Bryn Mawr, receiving her Ph.D. in 1940. Her studies in philosophy led not to academia but rather to a lifetime of social activism (AWTT). She believes that positive social change can happen by working together in small groups, not in large revolutions where one group of power changes position. She and her husband founded Detroit Summer in 1992, a community movement bringing together people of all races, cultures, and ages to rebuild Detroit. -- a city Boggs has described as "a symbol of the end of industrial society…buildings that were once architectural marvels, like the Book Cadillac hotel and Union Station, lie in ruins…and in most neighborhoods people live behind triple-locked doors and barred windows (AWTT)." Detroit Summer's activities include planting community gardens in vacant lots, creating enormous murals on buildings, and renovating houses. One of many great things Ms. Boggs did, she will be miss dearly.

Grace Lee Boggs. (n.d.). Retrieved March 03, 2021, from https://www.americanswhotellthetruth.org/portraits/grace-lee-boggs