Detroit Radicals' Odessey
In Love and Struggle: The Revolutionary Lives of James & Grace Lee Boggs

http://www.solidarity-us.org/node/4979
Date Written:  2017-05-01
Publisher:  Against the Current
Year Published:  2017
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX21597

Book review of Stephen M. Ward's In Love and Struggle: The Revolutionary Lives of James & Grace Lee Boggs.

Abstract: 
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Excerpt:

The Boggses' solidarity with Williams was a key part of their turn towards Black Power politics. In tandem, they befriended several prominent Black community leaders in Detroit: the Reverend Albert Cleague, the brothers Richard and Milton Henry, and soon Malcolm X.

In 1962, the Henry brothers formed the Group on Advanced Leadership (GOAL) in Detroit. The Boggs meanwhile moved into their new home at 3061 Field Street on Detroit's east side in the spring of 1962. In January 1963, buoyed by Williams' activism, U.S. protests against the assassination of Congo leader Patrice Lumumba, and new local Black political organizing, Correspondence published a special "Emancipation Proclamation" issue - the 150th anniversary of Lincoln's formal proclamation - extolling a new Black politics "Nationalist in tone and content."

The issue broke sharply with what it called "the ideological paternalism which socialists have always maintained in regard to the Negro struggle," calling it "white supremacy in a radical guise."

Two high points marked the period of the Boggses' roles as leaders of Detroit's Black nationalist upsurge: their prominent organizing role in the 1963 Northern Negro Leadership Conference, where Malcolm X delivered his now famous "Message to the Grassroots" speech, and the July, 1963 publication by Monthly Review Press of James Boggs' The American Revolution: Pages from a Negro Worker's Notebook.