Embracing Contradictions

This chapter describes the upbringing of Grace Lee Boggs. It follows her from her youth in New York City as the Chinese-American daughter of immigrants through graduate school at Bryn Mawr. After completing a dissertation on Hegel, she moves to Chicago.

Epilogue

and Keywords to be supplied.

Only One Side Is Right

This chapter describes Correspondence’s writing in support of Robert F. Williams, president of the Monroe, North Carolina chapter of the NAACP. Correspondence becomes less focused on documenting workers’ self-directed activism and more focused on documenting african american insurgency. The paper declares its support for student protestors as the sit-in movement commences.

Revolutionary Marxism

This chapter describes how Grace Lee Boggs engaged with radical politics upon her arrival in Chicago. After joining the Workers Party, she became a Trotskyist. She used her connections to the radical left to work with Chicago’s black community, wrote articles in the Trotskyite press in support of the March on Washington Movement, and eventually met C.L.R. James and joined the Johnson-Forest Tendency in splitting from the Socialist Workers Party. She ultimately helps form and publish Correspondence.

Making a Way Out of No Way

This chapter discusses James Boggs’s childhood and upbringing in the Deep South. It presents his education and his proximity to racial terror. It concludes as he rides the rails north, seeking work in Detroit.

The American Revolution

This chapter describes James and Grace Lee Boggs’s activities amidst the events of 1963. James Boggs publishes his disagreements with C.L.R. James in The American Revolution: Pages from a Negro Worker’s Notebook. James and Grace Lee Boggs work to encourage the incipient black power movement.

Building Correspondence

This chapter describes James and Grace Lee Boggs’s efforts to build the Correspondence organization and publish its newspaper. The newspaper reacts to events in the civil rights struggle, including the Brown v Board decision. Grace Lee Boggs works to draw attention to the fight for independence in Kenya.

Black Radical Detroit

This chapter follows James Boggs as he secures a job in the automobile industry in Detroit. He becomes committed to the labor movement and joins the UAW. He joins the SWP but breaks away to join a new organization called Correspondence.

An Ending and a Beginning

This chapter describes an ideological rupture at Correspondence. Debates about the course of the Cuban revolution lead to disagreements over the nature of the working class in America. James and Grace Lee Boggs leave the organization.

Marxism and Marriage in Detroit

This chapter describes James Boggs and Grace Lee Boggs’s meeting at Correspondence. C.L.R. James is forced by immigration issues to withdraw from the organization, and both James and Grace Lee assume leadership roles. Over the course of working together, James and Grace Lee marry in 1954.