A Note on Names

I have chosen to use the first names Grace and Jimmy throughout the book to avoid confusion or lack of clarity that may arise from using “Boggs” when referring to either of them. Furthermore, in my reference to James Boggs and C. L. R. James, I have avoided using the name James (except when using their full names), though friends and comrades did at times use “James” in reference to each man. In different periods of James Boggs’s life, friends and comrades also called him Jim or Jimmy, while C. L. R. James also went by various names over the course of his life. During the 1950s, when the two men were in the same organization, members of the group generally referred to C. L. R. James as “Jimmie” and James Boggs as “Jim” (and in letters, where they often used a single initial as shorthand, they identified each man as “J”). However, after that period, and for the rest of his life, James Boggs was most often called Jimmy. Most of James Boggs’s friends and comrades described in this book knew him as Jimmy, and that is the name by which he is most commonly known now. Therefore, for consistency and clarity throughout the text, I refer to James Boggs as “Jimmy” and C. L. R. James as “C. L. R.”