At 3 p.m. on Sunday, April 11, a lounge at University of Michigan Baits II Housing on North Campus will be named for legendary civil rights activist and author Grace Lee Boggs.

According to an email from Emily Lawsin of the University of Michigan Program in Asian/Pacific Islander American Studies, “This will be the second lounge at U-M named after an Asian American woman activist (the first being the Yuri Kochiyama Lounge in South Quad)."

Boggs has spent the past 70 years working in labor, civil rights, the environment and African American and Asian American issues. She founded Detroit Summer, and is active at the Boggs Center in Detroit. She was the Keynote Speaker at the 2003 University of Michigan Martin Luther King Day Symposium. Last month, she was the Keynote Speaker at the University of Michigan Center for African American Studies’ 40th Anniversary celebration. She received an honorary doctorate from the University of Michigan in December 2009.

Additional Note: Grace Lee Boggs will be speaking at the dedication program, which is open to the public and will be followed by a reception at the upper Coleman Lounge of Baits II Housing, 1440 Hubbard Road, North Campus, Ann Arbor.

Frances Kai-Hwa Wang is a second-generation Chinese American from California who now divides her time between Ann Arbor and the Big Island of Hawaii. She is editor of IMDiversity.com Asian American Village, lead multicultural contributor for AnnArbor.com and a contributor for New America Media's Ethnoblog. She is a popular speaker on Asian Pacific American and multicultural issues. Check out her Web site at franceskaihwawang.com, her blog at franceskaihwawang.blogspot.com and she can be reached at fkwang888@gmail.com.