For Donald Boggs, a visit to the home of his father, James Boggs, and stepmother, Grace Lee Boggs, was always sure to be eventful. 

In the house on Field Street on Detroit’s east side, discussions on the issues of the day were a given between the husband and wife activists, sometimes turning into heated arguments, recalled Donald Boggs. 

“Sitting around the dinner table was always interesting,” he told BridgeDetroit. “I recall one time dad and Grace got to debating on a particular topic, and then they got heated. Grace got so mad, she picked up a dishrag and threw it at him.” 

And Grace Lee Boggs was always willing to impart a lesson or two for family and friends. 

“Grace was going to give you a book or some material,” Donald Boggs said. “She was going to tell you to read it and tell you that the next time you come back, we’re going to go over it again. But you didn’t leave without some kind of challenge and some kind of homework.” 

On Saturday, he and other members of the James and Grace Lee Boggs Foundation will honor the legacy of the civil and labor rights activist and author during a 10-year memorial at Eastside Community Network, 4401 Conner St. Grace Lee Boggs died Oct. 5, 2015, at the age of 100. 

Called “Reimagine Everything,” the tribute will be hosted by Brittany Luse  of the NPR program, “It’s Been a Minute.” Some of the speakers include state Sen. Stephanie Chang, D-Detroit, state Rep. Mai Xiong, D-Warren, National Women’s Studies Association President Heidi R. Lewis, and Grace Lee Boggs’ niece, Tiffany Lee. Singer-songwriter and playwright Stew Stewart will perform a musical tribute. Doors open at 6 p.m., with the memorial from 7-9 p.m. The event is free but registration is required. A livestream will be available for those who are unable to attend in person. 

The James and Grace Lee Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership is celebrating its 30th anniversary with a new exhibit, “Community Safety in Detroit.” Guests can learn more about the organizing and community-driven initiatives the Boggs participated in to make Detroit a safer, healthier place. The exhibit is open until May 29, 2026, at the center’s headquarters, 3061 Field Street, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday. 

Scott Kurashige, president of the James and Grace Lee Boggs Foundation, said most of the speakers have a connection to the activist. Chang took one of Kurashige’s classes when he taught at the University of Michigan in the 2000s and lived with Grace Lee Boggs for a while after college. Kurashige met Lewis last year at the association’s conference in Detroit after noticing she was using quotes from one of Grace Lee Boggs’ books. He introduced her to some of Grace Lee Boggs’ family members and people who worked with the activist and her husband over the years. 

Kurashige said hundreds of people attended Grace Lee Boggs’ memorial service in 2015 and he knew he wanted to honor his friend on the 10-year anniversary of her passing. 

“I grew up Buddhist, and, in our tradition, memorials are very important for the living community to continue to respect and honor and carry on the legacy,” he said. “There was such a reverence for Grace and her joint work with James Boggs.” 

Donald Boggs, who is on the advisory board for the foundation, said his stepmother was always thinking about the past and present events of an issue and its implications for the future. That’s how the nonprofit came up with the theme, “Reimagine Everything.” 

“Grace would say, ‘We got through this period. “Let’s imagine something new, something different,’” he said. 

A different kind of revolutionary 

Grace Lee Boggs’ activism in Detroit began when she moved to the city in the early 1950s from Chicago. She landed a job editing for the radical publication Correspondence. It was while working for the paper that Grace Lee Boggs met James Boggs, an autoworker and labor activist. The two married in 1953. 

The Boggs’ became well-known for advocating for workers, the unemployed and the elderly. In the 1960s, James Boggs and Grace Lee Boggs supported the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Power Movement. 

Civil rights attorney and Boggs foundation vice president Alice Jennings met the couple in 1986 at the first community meeting of what would become the organization Save Our Sons and Daughters (SOSAD). The group was dedicated to preventing youth homicides in Detroit and addressing the problem of teen violence. Jennings said she became “fast friends” with the Boggs. 

“I helped formulate the 501(c)(3) nonprofit status for the group and Jimmy and Grace worked on the newsletter,” she said. “And Cliff Harris, who was over at the College for Creative Studies, would do the cartoon characters throughout the newsletter, and then we would get different writers to write articles.” 

In 1992, Jennings and the Boggs created the youth leadership program Detroit Summer. After James Boggs died in 1993, Grace Lee Boggs, Jennings, her husband Carl Edwards, and other community members, founded the James and Grace Lee Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership two years later. Located in the Boggs’ home, the center is dedicated to developing leadership skills for the next generation. 

“One of the reasons for developing and creating the Boggs Center and then the Boggs Foundation was to make absolutely sure that that will be some ongoing work in their legacy, memory, and to create a space for people who were like-minded, who felt like, ‘I want to do something in my community,’” Jennings said. 

Kurashige met Grace Lee Boggs in 1998 when he invited her to speak at a conference on Asian American movement activism in Los Angeles. As a scholar on Asian American and Black history, the meeting was life-changing, he said. 

“I really felt since meeting Grace that I had a better sense of how to think about social change and revolutionary transformation,” Kurashige said. “But moving to Detroit in 2000 really allowed me to not just take these ideas and connect them with something very concrete and practical, I was able to work with programs like Detroit Summer. And we started a program called Detroit Asian Youth Project on the east side of Detroit that expanded that youth leadership work to some of the immigrant and refugee communities that had been very underserved in the city and the region.” 

In 2011, Grace Lee Boggs and Kurashige released their book, “The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century.” 

Two years later, a group of educators opened a charter school in her honor, The James and Grace Lee Boggs School, located down the street from the Boggs’ home on Field Street. 

Passing the mantle to the next generation 

Kurashige said “Reimagine Everything” is not only celebrating Grace Lee Boggs and things that happened in the past, but also embracing the challenges and the burden of the present and future. Kurashige said Grace Lee Boggs’ activism is needed more than ever as low-income people, Black people and immigrants are facing attacks from President Trump and his administration. 

“There are certainly a lot of people that reflect James and Grace’s spirit in Detroit and around the country–artists, educators, community activists, labor leaders–but the struggle is not easy,” he said. “We really need to rededicate ourselves constantly, open ourselves to learning new lessons, to adjusting to new realities.” 

Jennings agreed, saying it’s no coincidence that the tribute is taking place on Saturday, as the second round of No Kings protests are set to take place nationwide and in Mexico, Panama, Puerto Rico and Canada in opposition to the Trump administration’s policies. She said if Grace Lee Boggs and James Boggs were still here today, they would be on the front lines of demonstrations or at least helping to mobilize them. 

“I’m pretty sure that people are not going to take the repression that is coming into their communities,” she said. “Not that there will be any violent response, but I think it will be revolutionary humanism, which Grace was working on; the concept that the same power, the same fighting force would be used to fight the repression and the retroness of our times that we’re experiencing.” 

Donald Boggs believes that there are still enough people around that worked with his parents to keep their legacies alive, but is unsure if their activism will carry on to the next generation. 

“Our biggest challenge is whether or not they can bring on the younger generation to pick up the mantle and carry it forward,” he said. “Many of our old-timers are no longer with us. That’s part of why we’re needing to talk about her legacy (with the event). It’s not about giving accolades to her. It’s about, ‘OK, how do we take what she had and move it forward so that other people can pick it up and go forward. And that’s a heck of a challenge.”