Prominent civil rights activist Grace Lee Boggs dies at 100

Grace Lee Boggs, a longtime civil rights activist, died Monday at her home in Detroit. She was 100. Her trustees said she died "as she lived, surrounded by books, politics, people, and ideas."

Born in Rhode Island in 1915 to Chinese immigrants, Boggs graduated from Barnard College in 1935 and received her PhD from Bryn Mawr in 1940. Because she was a woman and a minority, she was unable to land a position in academia, so she turned to social justice activism. Along with her husband, James Boggs, she was active in several movements, supporting labor, civil, tenants, and women's rights, NBC News reports. Boggs was one of the organizers of the 1963 march down Detroit's Woodward Avenue with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Grass Roots Leadership Conference with Malcolm X.

Boggs and her husband founded Detroit Summer, which gives kids the opportunity to participate in projects that revitalize Detroit neighborhoods, and the James and Grace Lee Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership. "As the child of Chinese immigrants and as a woman, Grace learned early on that the world needed changing, and she overcame barriers to do just that," President Obama said Monday. "She understood the power of community organizing at its core — the importance of bringing about change and getting people involved to shape their own destiny."

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The author of several books, including The Next American Revolution — Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century, she was the subject of a 2014 documentary by filmmaker Grace Lee, which aired on PBS stations across the United States. "I love that she was a woman of action and reflection, someone who learned from the past but would not get stuck in it," Lee told NBC News.