Boggs, James, 1919-1993

James and Grace Lee Boggs were revolutionary socialists who played a leading role in organizing radical organizations in Detroit and nationally as well as theorizing and updating the political philosophy of Marxism-Leninism. James Boggs was also a career auto worker employed at the Chrysler Corporation from 1940 to 1968. Mr. Boggs authored a number of books, including The American Revolution: Pages From a Negro Worker’s Notebook, Racism and the Class Struggle: Further Pages From a Black Worker’s Notebook, Revolution and Evolution in the Twentieth Century and Conversations in Maine. He died on July 22, 1993.

James Boggs (May 27, 1919 – July 22, 1993) was an American political activist, auto worker and author. He was married to philosopher activist Grace Lee Boggs for forty years until his death.

Born in 1919 in Marion Junction, Alabama,[1] Boggs was an African-American activist, perhaps best known for authoring The American Revolution: Pages from a Negro Worker's Notebook in 1963. He was also an auto worker at Chrysler from 1940 until 1968.

Boggs was active in the far left organization, Correspondence Publishing Committee, from around the time it left the Trotskyist movement in the early 1950s. The group was advised by C. L. R. James, who was at that time exiled in Britain. In 1955, James Boggs became the editor of their bi-monthly publication, called Correspondence. When Correspondence Publishing Committee suffered a split in 1955, led by Raya Dunayevskaya, and lost nearly half its membership, James and Grace Lee Boggs remained loyal to Correspondence Publishing Committee. However, in 1962, Boggs and Grace Lee Boggs led a split themselves, taking control over Correspondence Publishing Committee and breaking with C. L. R. James. Afterwards, Boggs continued publication of Correspondence independently for a couple of years. James Boggs expressed the reasons for the 1962 split in his 1963 book, The American Revolution: Pages from a Negro Worker's Notebook.[2]

In later years, he would play an influential role in the radical wing of the civil rights movement and interacted with many of the most important civil rights activists of the day including Malcolm X, Ossie Davis and many others.

In 1979 James Boggs and partner Grace Lee Boggs contributed to the founding of National Organization for an American Revolution (NOAR).[3]

Boggs and Grace Lee Boggs, who were married from 1953 until his death in 1993, built what Ibram X. Kendi called "a durable partnership that was at once marital, intellectual, and political. It was a genuine partnership of equals, remarkable not only for its unique pairing or for its longevity, but also for its capacity to continually generate theoretical reflection and modes of activist engagement."[4]