Professor Mary Phillips (Lehman College, City University of New York) is an expert on the history of race, gender and social movements in late-twentieth century America.  She is also the author of a forthcoming book about Ericka Huggins, a leading player in the Black Panther Movement, former political prisoner, and human rights advocate. 

Join Mary and Ericka in conversation as they explore the complex relationship between historian and subject and the political urgency of the Black Power project – both in its past and present guises, and heading into future. 

Refreshments will be served after this event.

Ericka Huggins is an educator, Black Panther Party member, former political prisoner, human rights advocate, and poet. For 50 years, Ericka has used her life experiences in service to community. From 1973-1981, she was director of the Black Panther Party’s Oakland Community School. From 1990-2004 Ericka managed HIV/AIDS Volunteer and Education programs. She also supported innovative mindfulness programs for women and youth in schools, jails and prisons.

Ericka was professor of Sociology and African American Studies from 2008 through 2015 in the Peralta Community College District. From 2003 to 2011 she was professor of Women and Gender Studies at California State Universities- East Bay and San Francisco. Ericka is a Racial Equity Learning Lab facilitator for WORLD TRUST Educational Services. She curates conversations focused on the individual and collective work of becoming equitable in all areas of our daily lives. Additionally, she facilitates workshops on the benefit of self care in sustaining social change.

She is co-author, with Stephen Shames, of the book, Comrade Sisters-Women of the Black Panther Party, published in 2022.

Mary Frances Phillips is a proud native of Detroit, Michigan, U.S.A. She is a scholar-activist, public intellectual, and Associate Professor of Africana Studies at Lehman College, City University of New York. Her interdisciplinary research agenda focuses on race and gender in post-1945 social movements and the carceral state. Her research areas include the Modern Black Freedom Struggle, Black Feminism, and Black Power Studies.

She was selected as a 2021-2022 award recipient for a faculty fellowship with the Institute for Advanced Study at the University of Notre Dame and the American Association of University Women Postdoctoral Research Leave Fellowship in 2018-2019. Forthcoming from New York University Press under its Black Power Series, Sister Love: Ericka Huggins, Spiritual Activism, and the Black Panther Party is a scholarly study and a biography. Her book historicizes women’s prison organizing, resistance, and collision with law enforcement with special attention to the life of Black Panther veteran Ericka Huggins.

She has published journal articles in SOULS: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society, the Women’s Studies Quarterly, the Western Journal of Black Studies, Spectrum: A Journal on Black Men, and the Syllabus Journal. Outside of the academy, her essays have been featured in the Huffington Post, Ms. Magazine blog, New Black Man (in Exile), Colorlines, Vibe Magazine, Black Youth Project, and the African American Intellectual History Society’s blog, Black Perspectives. Her work has garnered media attention in TIME Magazine, the New-York Historical Museum & Library Women at the Center blog series, the Detroit Free Press; BronxNet Cable Television; Bronx News 12; WBAI Pacifica Radio, New York City; and WNPR, Connecticut Public Radio. Her research has been supported by the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics at the City University of New York Graduate Center, and the Faculty Fellowship Publication Program with The City University of New York.

This event is a collaboration between the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice and the School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics, Queen’s University Belfast.