Participant Info

First Name
Mary
Last Name
Phillips
Country
United States
State
Affiliation
Lehman College, City University of New York
Website URL
http://maryphillipsphd.com/
Keywords
The Modern Black Freedom Struggle, Black Feminism, and Black Power Studies
Availability
Media Contact
Additional Contact Information
PhD
PhD

Personal Info

Photo
About Me

Mary Frances Phillips is a proud native of Detroit, Michigan. 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 the Notre Dame and the American Association of University Women Postdoctoral Research Leave Fellowship in 2018-2019. Her book, Black Panther Woman: The Political and Spiritual Life of Ericka Huggins (New York University Press, January 2025), is both a critical study and biography of Black Panther Party veteran Ericka Huggins, one of the longest-serving women members in the organization. It historicizes women’s prison organizing, resistance, and collision with law enforcement of women political prisoners. 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.

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