(Photograph of Ericka Huggins. Picture supply: San Francisco Chronicle/Hearst Newspapers/Getty Photographs)
The next excerpt comes from the ebook Black Panther Girl: The Political and Religious Lifetime of Ericka Huggins (NYU Press, 2025). The ebook explores the political and religious biography of a distinguished feminine member of the Black Panther Celebration.
This excerpt comes from the ebook’s introduction.
***
In fast succession, I used to be barraged with questions. “The place are you situated? Why are you selecting this matter? I’m assuming you’re an African American lady?” One after the opposite, the questions derailed me. I got here to this expertise because the interviewer, and but, throughout my first dialog with Black Panther Celebration veteran, educator, poet, human rights activist, and former political prisoner Ericka Cozette (Jenkins) Huggins in 2010, I shortly realized that I used to be the interviewee. I quickly found that this was not a typical researcher-subject relationship (if one exists). In our interview course of, Ericka would interview me as a lot as I interviewed her; however within the second, I used to be greatly surprised. I used to be the scholar. She was the topic. And but, right here I used to be explaining that I used to be a Black lady and daughter of Detroit, Michigan, obsessed with centering Black Panther Celebration (BPP) girls as frontline revolutionaries who intellectually contributed to Black Energy concept. From this primary interview, I knew that my native land, curiosity in BPP girls, and racial background mattered in methods I had not thought-about. Neither certainly one of us might relinquish for the sake of objectivity or scholarship our race, womanhood, or values. I had met my analysis topic, however extra importantly, I met who would grow to be my revolutionary trainer. Ericka provided historic context for our conversations, rooting our engagements within the racial system of US slavery and the historical past of civil rights girls. She beneficial books on the BPP for me to learn and generally invited me to occasions on BPP girls. Because it seems, she was not a analysis topic however a information. What I had conceived of as interviews turned conversations. Collectively, we weaved our dialogue, one which preserved our identities whereas concurrently being open to critique and onerous questions. These conversations revealed the convergence of Ericka’s social justice and spirituality, prompting me because the scholar-interlocutor to rethink my preconceived notions of scholarship. To successfully seize the richness of Ericka’s story, this ebook required a wholly totally different scholarly method—one which known as for my energetic engagement and self-reflection alongside Ericka as I targeted on what I name religious wellness.
Religious wellness encompasses a complete framework that intertwines self-care and neighborhood care, working on a scale from the native to the worldwide, from on a regular basis practices to revolutionary change. This ebook’s major intervention lies in an examination of Ericka’s profound follow of religious wellness. I outline religious wellness as Black feminist follow that interweaves neighborhood and self-affirming acts of care. Ericka engaged in religious wellness by training yoga and meditation, composing letters, writing poetry, and making neighborhood connections throughout her two-year imprisonment within the late Nineteen Sixties. These spirit-based acts of service had been cast to push back the visceral and psychological impacts of racial oppression. Whereas Ericka’s expertise with state and federal violence, notably her 1969 Connecticut arrest, catalyzed this lifelong religious wellness journey, seeds of this journey had been sown early on in her childhood.
Ericka started elevating her political consciousness at an early age. She was born on January 5, 1948, in Washington, DC, in a working-class household. When she attended the March on Washington on August 28, 1963, as a fifteen-year-old lady, towards her dad and mom’ needs, Ericka reached a turning level in her younger life and vowed that she would serve humanity. Later, whereas attending faculty at Lincoln College, a historic Black college, she learn a Ramparts journal article on prison fees levied towards Huey P. Newton, BPP co-founder and minister of protection. Upon studying the story, Ericka and her companion, John, determined to go away faculty within the fall of 1967, transfer to California, and be a part of the BPP. The BPP was one of many best-known and most misunderstood organizations through the Black Energy motion. Based in Oakland, California, in 1966, the BPP functioned as a grassroots political coalition-building group and served as a political house for Ericka from 1967 to 1981.
Ericka’s Arrest
“I believed we had been going to be killed,” Ericka recalled, when on the night of January 17, 1969, FBI Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO) brokers murdered her husband, John Huggins, and her comrade Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter on the College of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) campus.8 Ericka was solely twenty-one years previous and postnatal when the state murdered her husband. House alone the day of the capturing, Ericka seen the police stationed outdoors the Black Panthers’ two-level condo. Regardless of having simply realized of the shootings of her husband and pal in chilly blood, her concern instinctively shifted to her three-week-old daughter, Mai. Because of heavy police surveillance, Ericka feared for Mai’s life. After the remainder of the Black Panthers returned to the condo with out John and Bunchy, Ericka recalled, “I rolled her [Mai] up in a giant winter coat and gently positioned her below a mattress and stated goodbye to her.” Loud noise and chaos crammed the condo. The police shouted calls for, ordering Ericka and her fellow Black Panthers to return down the steps. Cautiously, she eliminated Mai from below the mattress. With a coat wrapped round Mai, Ericka descended the porch steps.
“Maintain her up so I can see her,” one of many law enforcement officials demanded. He then pointed his gun immediately at Mai.
“This can be a child! Put the gun away,” she pleaded.
“The newborn might need a gun,” the officer retorted, scoffing at her concern.
Ericka lifted the coat to show that she was holding a child, leaving Mai’s two small toes to dangle. The police took Ericka along with her child and the remainder of the Black Panthers into custody. Trusted pals picked up Mai, and the police transferred Ericka from the Los Angeles Seventy-Seventh Road police precinct to the Sybil Model Institute for Ladies. She was launched eight hours later. The law enforcement officials’ inhumanity resulted in state violence that spared no age or gender.
A Religious Childhood
“Who lives in me?” Ericka stated aloud to herself on the tender age of 9 as she regarded within the mirror whereas diligently brushing her enamel. The morning solar beamed via the lavatory window. Her youthful siblings, Kyra and Gervaze Jr., had been nonetheless sleeping. Ericka was an early riser. The scent of her mom’s do-it-yourself biscuits, sunny aspect eggs, bacon, and grits wafted from the kitchen. She might additionally hear music from the small AM radio within the kitchen that performed on till the top of every day. As she gazed at herself within the mirror, Ericka fell into her personal eyes. It didn’t really feel scary or creepy. As an alternative, she was curious. She felt that she was greater than the tween trying again at her. There was extra to her. Ericka wanted solutions. She dropped her toothbrush within the sink and ran downstairs to the kitchen, toothpaste nonetheless throughout her mouth.
“Momma, momma, who lives inside my eyes?”
“Oh, Ericka, you having certainly one of your questions once more? I don’t know, Suga. Possibly it’s God.”
“Okay, Momma.”
When recalling this second in her younger life, Ericka launched a full stomach snort. Ericka at all times requested plenty of questions. Her mom usually taught her that God lived in heaven and was not a determine that you possibly can actually maintain; God was infinitely complicated and multitudinal. Even younger Ericka knew that her mom was telling her in one of the best ways she knew how, “God lives inside you.”1 Whereas her mom didn’t totally reply the query, Ericka remembers how the question happy her curiosity that day and left a long-lasting mark. Her mom at all times had one thing useful and therapeutic to say. Even so, for years, Ericka continued to ponder the query.
When she was twelve years previous, Ericka awoke within the bed room she shared along with her youthful sister, Kyra. A deep query weighed on her thoughts: “Who am I?” She wrote the query all over the place—on a poster in giant capital letters, on a poster that she and her sister used to attract on and enhance of their bed room, and on the lavatory mirror. Then, she turned to Kyra.
“Don’t you already know? You’re Ericka,” replied Kyra, who was now 9 years previous.
“However, Kyra, there’s a lot extra to me and there’s a lot extra to you. Who am I?”
“You’re Ericka. Son of Gervaze and Cozette. You reside on Fifty-Fifth Road in Southeast Washington, DC. You’re a Black lady and also you’re tall.”
Kyra innocently and matter-of-factly identified the apparent, exterior facets, however Ericka’s questions hinted at one thing deeper, one thing not so simply named or described. At twelve years previous, Ericka’s soul was stirring, longing to determine her life’s objective.
These youthful moments marked the beginnings of Ericka’s journey towards religious discovery. She got here to know the presence of a timeless, ageless, infinite energy inside each human being, and that this energy lived inside her.
Mary Frances Phillips is a scholar-activist, public mental, and Affiliate Professor of African American Research on the College of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her scholarly pursuits embrace the Trendy Black Freedom Wrestle, Black Feminism, and Black Energy Research.
***
All in favour of extra on this matter? Take a look at episode 58 of the Revealer podcast: “A Black Panther Girl, Spirituality, and As we speak’s Activism.”
(Photograph of Ericka Huggins. Picture supply: San Francisco Chronicle/Hearst Newspapers/Getty Photographs)
The next excerpt comes from the ebook Black Panther Girl: The Political and Religious Lifetime of Ericka Huggins (NYU Press, 2025). The ebook explores the political and religious biography of a distinguished feminine member of the Black Panther Celebration.
This excerpt comes from the ebook’s introduction.
***
In fast succession, I used to be barraged with questions. “The place are you situated? Why are you selecting this matter? I’m assuming you’re an African American lady?” One after the opposite, the questions derailed me. I got here to this expertise because the interviewer, and but, throughout my first dialog with Black Panther Celebration veteran, educator, poet, human rights activist, and former political prisoner Ericka Cozette (Jenkins) Huggins in 2010, I shortly realized that I used to be the interviewee. I quickly found that this was not a typical researcher-subject relationship (if one exists). In our interview course of, Ericka would interview me as a lot as I interviewed her; however within the second, I used to be greatly surprised. I used to be the scholar. She was the topic. And but, right here I used to be explaining that I used to be a Black lady and daughter of Detroit, Michigan, obsessed with centering Black Panther Celebration (BPP) girls as frontline revolutionaries who intellectually contributed to Black Energy concept. From this primary interview, I knew that my native land, curiosity in BPP girls, and racial background mattered in methods I had not thought-about. Neither certainly one of us might relinquish for the sake of objectivity or scholarship our race, womanhood, or values. I had met my analysis topic, however extra importantly, I met who would grow to be my revolutionary trainer. Ericka provided historic context for our conversations, rooting our engagements within the racial system of US slavery and the historical past of civil rights girls. She beneficial books on the BPP for me to learn and generally invited me to occasions on BPP girls. Because it seems, she was not a analysis topic however a information. What I had conceived of as interviews turned conversations. Collectively, we weaved our dialogue, one which preserved our identities whereas concurrently being open to critique and onerous questions. These conversations revealed the convergence of Ericka’s social justice and spirituality, prompting me because the scholar-interlocutor to rethink my preconceived notions of scholarship. To successfully seize the richness of Ericka’s story, this ebook required a wholly totally different scholarly method—one which known as for my energetic engagement and self-reflection alongside Ericka as I targeted on what I name religious wellness.
Religious wellness encompasses a complete framework that intertwines self-care and neighborhood care, working on a scale from the native to the worldwide, from on a regular basis practices to revolutionary change. This ebook’s major intervention lies in an examination of Ericka’s profound follow of religious wellness. I outline religious wellness as Black feminist follow that interweaves neighborhood and self-affirming acts of care. Ericka engaged in religious wellness by training yoga and meditation, composing letters, writing poetry, and making neighborhood connections throughout her two-year imprisonment within the late Nineteen Sixties. These spirit-based acts of service had been cast to push back the visceral and psychological impacts of racial oppression. Whereas Ericka’s expertise with state and federal violence, notably her 1969 Connecticut arrest, catalyzed this lifelong religious wellness journey, seeds of this journey had been sown early on in her childhood.
Ericka started elevating her political consciousness at an early age. She was born on January 5, 1948, in Washington, DC, in a working-class household. When she attended the March on Washington on August 28, 1963, as a fifteen-year-old lady, towards her dad and mom’ needs, Ericka reached a turning level in her younger life and vowed that she would serve humanity. Later, whereas attending faculty at Lincoln College, a historic Black college, she learn a Ramparts journal article on prison fees levied towards Huey P. Newton, BPP co-founder and minister of protection. Upon studying the story, Ericka and her companion, John, determined to go away faculty within the fall of 1967, transfer to California, and be a part of the BPP. The BPP was one of many best-known and most misunderstood organizations through the Black Energy motion. Based in Oakland, California, in 1966, the BPP functioned as a grassroots political coalition-building group and served as a political house for Ericka from 1967 to 1981.
Ericka’s Arrest
“I believed we had been going to be killed,” Ericka recalled, when on the night of January 17, 1969, FBI Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO) brokers murdered her husband, John Huggins, and her comrade Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter on the College of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) campus.8 Ericka was solely twenty-one years previous and postnatal when the state murdered her husband. House alone the day of the capturing, Ericka seen the police stationed outdoors the Black Panthers’ two-level condo. Regardless of having simply realized of the shootings of her husband and pal in chilly blood, her concern instinctively shifted to her three-week-old daughter, Mai. Because of heavy police surveillance, Ericka feared for Mai’s life. After the remainder of the Black Panthers returned to the condo with out John and Bunchy, Ericka recalled, “I rolled her [Mai] up in a giant winter coat and gently positioned her below a mattress and stated goodbye to her.” Loud noise and chaos crammed the condo. The police shouted calls for, ordering Ericka and her fellow Black Panthers to return down the steps. Cautiously, she eliminated Mai from below the mattress. With a coat wrapped round Mai, Ericka descended the porch steps.
“Maintain her up so I can see her,” one of many law enforcement officials demanded. He then pointed his gun immediately at Mai.
“This can be a child! Put the gun away,” she pleaded.
“The newborn might need a gun,” the officer retorted, scoffing at her concern.
Ericka lifted the coat to show that she was holding a child, leaving Mai’s two small toes to dangle. The police took Ericka along with her child and the remainder of the Black Panthers into custody. Trusted pals picked up Mai, and the police transferred Ericka from the Los Angeles Seventy-Seventh Road police precinct to the Sybil Model Institute for Ladies. She was launched eight hours later. The law enforcement officials’ inhumanity resulted in state violence that spared no age or gender.
A Religious Childhood
“Who lives in me?” Ericka stated aloud to herself on the tender age of 9 as she regarded within the mirror whereas diligently brushing her enamel. The morning solar beamed via the lavatory window. Her youthful siblings, Kyra and Gervaze Jr., had been nonetheless sleeping. Ericka was an early riser. The scent of her mom’s do-it-yourself biscuits, sunny aspect eggs, bacon, and grits wafted from the kitchen. She might additionally hear music from the small AM radio within the kitchen that performed on till the top of every day. As she gazed at herself within the mirror, Ericka fell into her personal eyes. It didn’t really feel scary or creepy. As an alternative, she was curious. She felt that she was greater than the tween trying again at her. There was extra to her. Ericka wanted solutions. She dropped her toothbrush within the sink and ran downstairs to the kitchen, toothpaste nonetheless throughout her mouth.
“Momma, momma, who lives inside my eyes?”
“Oh, Ericka, you having certainly one of your questions once more? I don’t know, Suga. Possibly it’s God.”
“Okay, Momma.”
When recalling this second in her younger life, Ericka launched a full stomach snort. Ericka at all times requested plenty of questions. Her mom usually taught her that God lived in heaven and was not a determine that you possibly can actually maintain; God was infinitely complicated and multitudinal. Even younger Ericka knew that her mom was telling her in one of the best ways she knew how, “God lives inside you.”1 Whereas her mom didn’t totally reply the query, Ericka remembers how the question happy her curiosity that day and left a long-lasting mark. Her mom at all times had one thing useful and therapeutic to say. Even so, for years, Ericka continued to ponder the query.
When she was twelve years previous, Ericka awoke within the bed room she shared along with her youthful sister, Kyra. A deep query weighed on her thoughts: “Who am I?” She wrote the query all over the place—on a poster in giant capital letters, on a poster that she and her sister used to attract on and enhance of their bed room, and on the lavatory mirror. Then, she turned to Kyra.
“Don’t you already know? You’re Ericka,” replied Kyra, who was now 9 years previous.
“However, Kyra, there’s a lot extra to me and there’s a lot extra to you. Who am I?”
“You’re Ericka. Son of Gervaze and Cozette. You reside on Fifty-Fifth Road in Southeast Washington, DC. You’re a Black lady and also you’re tall.”
Kyra innocently and matter-of-factly identified the apparent, exterior facets, however Ericka’s questions hinted at one thing deeper, one thing not so simply named or described. At twelve years previous, Ericka’s soul was stirring, longing to determine her life’s objective.
These youthful moments marked the beginnings of Ericka’s journey towards religious discovery. She got here to know the presence of a timeless, ageless, infinite energy inside each human being, and that this energy lived inside her.
Mary Frances Phillips is a scholar-activist, public mental, and Affiliate Professor of African American Research on the College of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her scholarly pursuits embrace the Trendy Black Freedom Wrestle, Black Feminism, and Black Energy Research.
***
All in favour of extra on this matter? Take a look at episode 58 of the Revealer podcast: “A Black Panther Girl, Spirituality, and As we speak’s Activism.”
