This east side house was the home of Jimmy and Grace Lee Boggs, and served as a key hub for grassroots work during the Civil Rights Movement.

Built by the architectural firm of Spier & Rohns in the Arts and Crafts style, the home at 3061 Field Street is a duplex spanning over 4,500 square feet. It is located in the Islandview neighborhood, about a mile north of Belle Isle and just west of Indian Village. With craftsman-style designs on the inside, including built-in bookshelves on either side of the window, honey-colored hardwood floors, and original work in the bathrooms, the home was a work of art. Spier & Rohns was a leading architectural firm in Detroit, primarily designing public and commercial buildings, including the Detroit Savings Bank in 1895 (located on Griswold Street in Capitol Park, now luxury apartments) and the Chamber of Commerce Building in 1895.

The home was originally occupied by Thomas F. Comerford and his wife, Josephine. Thomas served in several different capacities in the city. From 1889 to 1891, he served on the Detroit Board of Education; in 1913, he served on the Board of Water Commissioners and on the Draft Board during World War I. He later was the president of Standard Computing Scale Co. and remained in that role until his death in 1938.

The second flat was the home of Dr. William A. Repp and his wife, Blanche. Repp spent 50 years working at St. Mary’s Hospital, later Detroit Memorial. In 1962, James (Jimmy) and Grace Lee Boggs moved into the home, and it soon became an informal community center and home for workshops, study groups, and organizations focused on activism.

James Boggs was born May 28, 1919, in Marion, Ala., just a half hour northwest of Selma, which would later become a key site in the Civil Rights Movement. In 1937, he graduated from Dunbar High School in Bessemer, Ala., and made his way north, where he eventually settled in Detroit and worked for the Works Progress Administration until 1941, after which he worked on the line at Chrysler's Jefferson Avenue assembly plant. He became a leading voice in the labor movement and an activist in the Black Power Movement. In 1963, he published his first book, “The American Revolution: Pages From a Negro Worker’s Notebook,” where he warned about the threat that automation posed to the working class.

Grace Lee was born June 27, 1915, in Providence, R.I., to Chinese immigrants. Her father owned Chin Lee’s restaurant on Broadway, just north of Times Square in New York City, as well as several other East Coast restaurants. She graduated from Barnard College with a degree in philosophy and later received a PhD. from Bryn Mawr College in Philadelphia. After working with C.L.R. James and A. Phillip Randolph and witnessing firsthand how grassroots community activism can affect change, she dedicated her life to activism within the Black community. For a decade, she worked for the Socialist Workers Party, but grew disillusioned with its hesitancy to support fair labor rights for Black workers. She and other members broke ties with the organization in New York and moved to Detroit in 1953 to continue the work.

James and Grace met that year, and married a year later. As an interracial married couple, they faced discrimination, even being evicted from Grace’s apartment when James moved in after their wedding. They moved into the home at 3061 Field St. just as the Civil Rights Movement was gaining national attention. Protests in solidarity and the demand for equal rights were happening all over the country; Detroit was no exception. Detroit leaders came together to form the Detroit Council for Human Rights and to organize the Detroit Walk to Freedom, which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led down Woodward Avenue on June 23, 1963, drawing a crowd of 250,000. After the success of the march, the focus shifted to keeping momentum and to equal employment opportunities for Black workers. There was some hesitation within the group's leadership, including the Rev. C.L. Franklin, who felt political pressure to distance from the Black revolution and its ideas, so the group eventually split. James and Grace organized the Grassroots Leadership Conference in November 1963, and Malcolm X was the keynote speaker.

The couple continued to organize and fight for equal rights for the Black community. They formed the Inner City Organization, which focused on expanding the rights of those living in the inner city and also created programs to expand education reforms within the Detroit Public School system because Black children were receiving an education far inferior to that of white children. During the unrest in Detroit during July 1967, the Boggses were out of town in California, but their names were cited as blame. While the media called it a “race riot” and a breakdown of law and order, many Detroiters saw it as an uprising as a response to injustice.

The home at 3061 Field St. became a hub of action and thought and a haven for civil rights, labor rights and critical thinking. The second floor of the home became the Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership.

James passed away in 1993, and Grace continued their work until her death in 2015 at the age of 100. Upon her directive, the James & Grace Lee Boggs Foundation was founded in 2017, not only to manage their papers but also to continue supporting civil rights work at the grassroots level.