Sister Love: Ericka Huggins, Spiritual Activism, and the Black Panther Party
The first and only scholarly monograph on Black Panther Party member, Ericka Huggins, Sister Love foregrounds prison organizing and collective care strategies by Panther women to oppose carceral violence. The book documents Huggins’s early life and career in the BPP, her imprisonment, and post Panther work. The heart of the book, on the whole, excavates Huggins’ day-to-day experience and acts of political dissent through an examination of her wellness praxis routine. Phillips argues that Huggins’ actions serve as forms of resistance critical not only to her preservation but that of other women prisoners and that her caged experiences exemplify the critical role of spiritual growth and its interconnections with Black Power social activism.
Mary Frances Phillips is a proud native of Detroit, Michigan. She is an 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.
Currently she is working on her book manuscript, Sister Love: Ericka Huggins, Spiritual Activism, and the Black Panther Party which is under contract with New York University Press’ Black Power Series. Sister Love is both a critical study and a biography. It historicizes women’s prison organizing, resistance, and collision with law enforcement with critical attention to the life of Black Panther Party veteran, Ericka Huggins, one of the longest-serving women members in the organization. She has published journal articles in SOULS: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society, theWomen’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, 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 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’s Public Media.
Professor Phillips was the James and Grace Lee Boggs Visiting Assistant Professor of African American Studies at Wayne State University. Her research has been supported by the American Association of University Women American Postdoctoral Research Leave Fellowship, 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.
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