James Boggs was an American political activist, auto worker and author. He was married to feminist activist Grace Lee Boggs

Grace Lee Boggs

Grace Lee Boggs is an author, lifelong social activist and feminist. She is known for her years of political collaboration with C.L.R. James and Raya Dunayevskaya in the 1940s and 1950s. She eventually went off in her own political direction in the 1960s with her husband of some forty years, James...

 for forty years until his death in 1993.

Biography

James 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

Correspondence Publishing Committee

Correspondence Publishing Committee was a radical left organization led by C.L.R. James and Martin Glaberman that existed in the United States from approximately 1951 until it split in 1962.-History:...

 led by C.L.R. James from around the time it left the Trotskyist movement in the early 1950s, until Boggs and Grace Lee Boggs led a split in 1962, breaking with C.L.R. James. When Correspondence Publishing Committee earlier suffered a split in 1955 led by Raya Dunayevskaya

Raya Dunayevskaya

Raya Dunayevskaya was the founder of the philosophy of Marxist Humanism in the United States of America. At one time Leon Trotsky's secretary, she later split with him and ultimately founded the organization News and Letters Committees and was its leader until her death.-Biography:Of Jewish...

 and lost nearly half its membership, Boggs and Grace Lee Boggs remained loyal to Correspondence Publishing Committee and an exiled C.L.R. James who advised the group from Britain. James Boggs was named the editor of their bi-monthly publication, also known as Correspondence, in 1955. However, political differences with C.L.R. James over time would eventually lead Boggs to take control over Correspondence Publishing Committee in 1962 and continue publication 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.

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

Malcolm X

Malcolm X , born Malcolm Little and also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz , was an African American Muslim minister and human rights activist. To his admirers he was a courageous advocate for the rights of African Americans, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its...

, Ossie Davis

Ossie Davis

Ossie Davis was an American film actor, director, poet, playwright, writer, and social activist.-Early years:...

 and many others.

He and Governor Boggs were apparently unrelated although both being born 10 years apart and dying the same year.

Works

• The American Revolution: Pages from a Negro Worker's Notebook (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1963).
• Book Manifesto for a Black revolutionary party (Philadelphia, Pacesetters Pub. House, 1969).
• Racism and the Class Struggle: Further Pages from a Black Worker's Notebook (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1970).
• Lenin today; Eight essays on the hundredth anniversary of Lenin's birth (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1970). (with Paul Sweezy
  Paul Sweezy
  Paul Marlor Sweezy was a Marxist economist, political activist, publisher, and founding editor of the long-running magazine Monthly Review...
  
   and Harry Magdoff
  Harry Magdoff
  Henry Samuel Magdoff , was a prominent American socialist commentator. He held several administrative positions in government during the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt and later became co-editor of the Marxist publication, Monthly Review.-Early years:A child of poor Russian-Jewish immigrants,...
  
  )
• The awesome responsibilities of revolutionary leadership (Detroit, Mich: Committee for Political Development, 1970). (with Grace Lee Boggs)
• But what about the workers? (Detroit: Advocators, 1973). (with James Hocker)
• Revolution and evolution in the twentieth century (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974). (with Grace Lee Boggs)
• Issues in race and ethnic relations: theory, research, and action (Itasca, Ill: F. E. Peacock Publishers, 1977). (with Jack Rothman)
• Conversations in Maine: exploring our nation's future (Boston: South End Press
  South End Press
  South End Press is a non-profit book publisher run on a model of participatory economics. It was founded in 1977 by Michael Albert, Lydia Sargent, John Schall, Pat Walker, Juliet Schor, Mary Lea, Joe Bowring, and Dave Millikan, among others, in Boston's South End...
  
  , 1978). (with Grace Lee Boggs, Freddy Paine and Lyman Paine
  Lyman Paine
  George Lyman Paine, Jr. , known as Lyman Paine, was an architect and radical left activist. He is known for his work with the Correspondence Publishing Committee with his wife Freddy Paine, and was closely associated with Grace Lee Boggs.Paine was born in New York City in 1901. His father George...
  
  )
• Towards a new concept of citizenship (Detroit: National Organization for an American Revolution, 1979).
• Liberation or revolution? (Detroit: National Organization for an American Revolution, 1980).
• These are the times that try our souls: the questions we have yet to ask ourselves (Detroit: National Organization for an American Revolution, 1981).(with Grace Lee Boggs and James Hocker)
• Historical development of our social forces (Detroit: National Organization for an American Revolution, 1982) "Cadre Training School, Dec. 1-5, 1982."
• Our American reality (Detroit: National Organization for an American Revolution, 1982) "Cadre Training School, Dec. 1-5, 1982."
• The urgent plea: a call for Black leadership (Philadelphia: National Organization for an American Revolution, 1985).
• What can we be that our children see? (Detroit: New Life Publishers, 1994).

Sources

• Paul Buhle, "An Asian-American Tale" Monthly Review (January 1999), pp. 47-50.
• Grace Lee Boggs, Living for Change: An Autobiography (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998).
• Kent Worcester, C.L.R. James: A Political biography (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996).