Participant Info

First Name
Mary
Last Name
Phillips
Country
United States
State
IL
Affiliation
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Website URL
https://www.maryfrancesphillips.com/
Keywords
The Modern Black Freedom Struggle, Black Women's History, Black Feminism, Black Power Studies
Availability
Media Contact
Additional Contact Information
PhD
PhD

Personal Info

Photo
About Me

Dr. Mary Frances Phillips is an Associate Professor of African American Studies at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She is a historian of Black political life whose research examines Black women’s activism, political repression, incarceration, carceral conditions, and practices of wellness in the late twentieth century.

Her book, Black Panther Woman: The Political and Spiritual Life of Ericka Huggins (2025, NYU Press Black Power Series), is both a critical study and a biography of Black Panther Party veteran Ericka Huggins. Through Huggins’s political and spiritual life, Phillips reframes histories of women’s prison organizing, resistance, and state repression. Recipient of the 2026 Lambda Literary Award in Lesbian Memoir/Biography, Black Panther Woman was also a finalist for the 2026 Book Prize awarded by the Association for the Study of African American Life and History.

Phillips has published in SOULS: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Western Journal of Black Studies, Spectrum: A Journal on Black Men, and Syllabus Journal. Her public scholarship appears in The Huffington Post, Colorlines, Vibe Magazine, The Fulcrum, Black Youth Project, Word In Black, Baptist News Global, New Black Man (in Exile), The Opinion Pages, and the African American Intellectual History Society’s blog, Black Perspectives.

Her current book project examines methods of Black care within social movements across health and wellness, athleticism, and filmmaking.

Recent Publications

Mary Frances Phillips, Black Panther Woman: The Political and Spiritual Life of Ericka Huggins. New York University Press, (Black Power Series), January 2025

Mary Frances Phillips, Rashida L. Harrison, and Nicole M. Jackson, “Black Love,” Special Issue of the Women’s Studies Quarterly, 50 (1 & 2), Spring/Summer 2022.

Mary Frances Phillips, Robyn C. Spencer, Angela D. LeBlanc-Ernest, and Tracye A. Matthews, Ode to Our Feminist Foremothers: The Intersectional Black Panther Party History Project on Collaborative Praxis and 50 Years of Panther History,”  SOULS: A Critical  Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society, 19 (3) Spring 2017: 241-260.

Mary Frances Phillips and Angela D. LeBlanc-Ernest, The Hidden Narratives: Recovering and (Re)Visioning the Community Activism of Men in the Black Panther Party,” Spectrum: A Journal on Black Men, 5 (1) Fall 2016: 63-89.

Mary Slavkin and Mary Frances Phillips, Collaboration Across Disciplines: Implementation in Creative Assignment Development.” Syllabus Journal, 5 (1) Summer 2016: 1-14.

Mary Frances Phillips, “The Power of the First-Person Narrative: Ericka Huggins and the Black Panther Party.” Women’s Studies Quarterly: The 1970s’s, 43 (3 & 4) Fall/Winter 2015:33-51.

Mary Frances Phillips, “The Feminist Leadership of Ericka Huggins in the Black Panther Party.” Black Diaspora Review, 4 (1) Winter 2014: 187-218.

Mary Frances Phillips, “Black Studies: Challenges and Critical Debates.” The Western Journal of Black Studies, 34 (2) Summer 2010: 273-277.

Media Coverage
Country Focus
United States
Expertise by Geography
United States
Expertise by Chronology
20th century
Expertise by Topic
Women