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Over a light boue map of detroit, a black and white photo of Grace Lee Boggs smiling. In the back, raised revolutionary fists and a Detroit-style D. (graphic by Lissa Deonarain(
On today’s program we honor the life and legacy of civil rights activist Grace Lee Boggs (June 27, 1915 – October 5, 2015).
Through the lens of the documentary film American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs we present a close and personal view of Boggs’ activism. The film plunges us into Boggs’ lifetime of vital thinking and action, traversing the major U.S. social movements of the last century; from labor to civil rights, to Black Power, feminism, the Asian American and environmental justice movements and beyond.
Boggs’ constantly evolving strategy—her willingness to re-evaluate and change tactics in relation to the world shifting around her—drives the story forward. Angela Davis, Bill Moyers, Bill Ayers, Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis, Danny Glover, Boggs’ late husband James and a host of Detroit comrades across three generations help shape this uniquely American story. As she wrestles with a Detroit in ongoing transition, contradictions of violence and non-violence, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, the 1967 rebellions, and nonlinear notions of time and history, Boggs emerges with an approach that is radical in its simplicity and clarity: revolution is not an act of aggression or merely a protest. Revolution, Boggs says, is about something deeper within the human experience — the ability to transform oneself to transform the world.
Special thanks to Grace Lee (no relation), producer and director of American Revolutionary, and to raptivist Invincible.
Featuring Credits:
Music Credits:
- Bontex, Creeping
- Blue Dot Sessions, Grand Caravan
- Invincible + Waajeed, Detroit Summer
- Audio Banger, the Garden State
