About the Boggs Foundation

President

Scott Kurashige first met Grace Lee Boggs in 1998, when he invited her to speak at the Serve the People conference on Asian American movement activism and the Asian Left Forum gathering in Los Angeles. He subsequently moved to the Eastside of Detroit, where he worked closely with Grace on their co-authored book, The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century (2011). As a scholar/activist of Black and Asian American history, urban studies, and social movements, he is author of The Shifting Grounds of Race: Black and Japanese Americans in the Making of Multiethnic Los Angeles (2008) and The Fifty-Year Rebellion: How the U.S. Political Crisis Began in Detroit (2017) and co-author of Exiled to Motown: A History of Japanese Americans in Detroit (2015). He received a PhD in History from UCLA and serves as literary executor for James and Grace Lee Boggs.

Vice President

Alice B. Jennings was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan. She is married to attorney Carl R. Edwards, and the two have raised seven (7) children in Detroit.

Alice Jennings was a founding partner in the law firm of Edwards & Jennings, P.C., created with Carl R. Edwards in 1982. Legal giant, former Howard University Dean Charles Houston, mentor to the legendary United States Court Justice Thurgood Marshall has intoned: “A lawyer is either a social engineer or a parasite.” As a trial lawyer for the people, Alice, is a “link in the chain” of Dean Houston’s powerful insight. She believes that the law should be used to advance the cause of social justice and to advance humanity. She has a long history of advocacy for the people of the City of Detroit, State of Michigan, and throughout the United States. Alice specializes in employment law, civil rights, environmental justice law, personal injury and class actions. Alice is an affiliated attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF).

In 1986, Alice met James and Grace Lee Boggs in the first community organizing meeting of what became “Save Our Sons and Daughters (SOSAD)”. In 1986 the Detroit community organized to stop the epidemic violence of “kids killing kids”, in 1986. Mothers Clementine Barfield, Vera Rucker, Alma Giles, and many others who lost their young children and teens killed by an epidemic of gun violence joined as leaders and created the historic movement to stop the violence. During James,’ Grace’s, and Alice’s time working together, the SOSAD Newsletter, “Arms Around the Children, Skyrocket to Peace;” and a Peace Education Curriculum for Elementary Age Children; and “Without Justification,” a trial coverage of the Malice Green murder trial in Detroit, were programs and writings created with their collaboration.

James and Grace became close friends of Alice and Carl Edwards, organizing with grassroot activists on paramount community issues of the day. For example, “Detroit Summer” and “Coalition to Stop Privatization and Save Our City,” were community movements in which James, Grace, Carl and Alice were integrally involved. A city-wide “Peoples Festival” was held in the early 1990s. This was the culmination of extensive and intensive community organizing and the engagement with the youth of the City of Detroit. The purpose was twofold: 1) to train the next generation of community and activist leaders; and 2) to preserve for future generations the historical memory and legacies of the leaders, activist and struggles for social and economic justice change that had occurred before their time.

After James Boggs passed in 1993, Carl and Alice encouraged Grace to write her autobiography, editing and reviewing drafts, along with others, of what became Grace’s groundbreaking book, “Living For Change”. Grace, Carl and Alice, with other friends, in 1994 founded the James and Grace Lee Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership. A children’s program; “Artist and Children Creating Community Together” (AC3T), was a youth program created in association with the Center for Creative Studies, Detroit Public Schools and the Boggs Center, envisioning a rebirth of Detroit through giant murals created by students, mentored by established artists.

In 2012, after three years of work with the City of Detroit’s Historic District Commission, Grace and Alice successfully had the home of James and Grace Lee Boggs, at 3061 Field Street in Detroit, Michigan, declared a Historic District with a City of Detroit Ordinance passed with that designation. In 1995, Grace and Alice worked with Donnelle Wilkins, and other environmental justice activists, to create Detroiters Working for Environmental Justice. Alice, who was also a friend of Rosa Parks, arranged a historic meeting with Grace, of the two icons in 2002.

In 2003/2004 Alice resigned her Board position with the Boggs Center. For several years, from approximately 2010 to 2018, Alice was a Board member with the James and Grace Lee Boggs School, whose leaders were Julia Pointer, Amanda Rosman, and Marisol Teachworth. Just before Grace’s death in 2015, Grace named Alice the Trustee of Grace’s and James’ estate. After Grace’s death, in keeping with Grace’s will, Alice became an officer of the newly formed James and Grace Lee Boggs Foundation.

At Grace’s urging and instruction just before her death, Alice has been involved in community, legal and legislative work, with the People’s Water Board Coalition (PWBC), working with legendary community activist, Marian Kramer and Maureen Taylor, and other community water organizations. Alice has been both an activist and leader in the “Water Justice Movement” in the fight for safe, clean, affordable water and sanitation, declaring water a human right. In 2023 the PWBC, with Alice, Lila Cabbil and Sylvia Orduño as producers, premiered the film: “Who’s Water? The People’s Movement for Safe Affordable Water in the United States.”

Treasurer

Aurora Esperanza was born in Detroit of African American and Filipino heritage. She grew up in a Catholic and Muslim family. She holds an M.A. in Social Foundations of Education from Eastern Michigan University and a B.A. in Sociology from Wayne State University. Ms. Harris is the President of the Filipino American National Historical Society-Michigan Chapter, co-founder of We the People of Detroit, and board member of Broadside Lotus Press. She is an award-winning published poet and Lecturer ll at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, teaching Detroit History and Culture, African and African American Studies and Literature, Advanced Creative Writing, and other courses. Her poem about Grace Lee Boggs’ life, “Now. Then. Tomorrow. In Memory of Grace Lee Boggs” is published in Educational Studies: A Journal of the American Educational Studies Association, Volume 52, Issue 2, 2016. Ms. Harris has received awards including; Community Hero Award, Association of Chinese Americans (2020); "Unsung Heroes" Award - Michigan and Detroit National Lawyers Guild (2015); Howard Zinn Lifetime Achievement Award - Peace and Justice Studies Association (2014); and PEN-Oakland Josephine Miles Excellence in Literature Award for Solitude of Five Black Moons (2012).

Secretary

Michelle is a landscape architect whose practice brings together her backgrounds in ecology, environmental justice, horticulture, and organizing. She met Grace while taking an Asian American Studies course while an undergraduate student at the University of Michigan, which ultimately inspired her to move to Detroit after college and dive deeply into youth and environmental justice organizing taking place in there. Her experiences as a young activist in Detroit led her to pursue the practice of landscape architecture as a vehicle re-imagine how we design and co-create communities. She is currently based in Chicago.