Mary Phillips

E-mail Address: mary.phillips@lehman.cuny.edu
Office: Carman Hall, Room 289 
Rank: Associate Professor 
Personal Website

Mary Frances Phillips (BS, Michigan State University; MA, The Ohio State University; Ph.D., Michigan State University) is an Associate Professor of Africana Studies at Lehman College. 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.  

Her book, Black Panther Woman: The Political and Spiritual Life of Ericka Huggins will be released in January 2025 with New York University Press’ Black Power Series. Black Panther Woman is both a critical study and biography of Black Panther Party veteran Ericka Huggins, one of the longest-serving women members in the organization. Her book 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.

Selected Recent Publications

• The Power of the First-Person Narrative: Ericka Huggins and the Black Panther Party. Women¹s Studies Quarterly: The 1970¹s, 43 (3 & 4) Fall/Winter 2015: 33-51.
• The Feminist Leadership of Ericka Huggins in the Black Panther Party. Black Diaspora Review, 4 (1) Winter 2014: 187-218.
• Black Hair Politics in White Academia: With Reference to Black Studies. In Integrated but Unequal: Black Faculty in Predominantly White Space, edited by Mark Christian (Trenton and Asmara: Africa World Press, 2012): 93-104.
• Black Studies: Challenges and Critical Debates. The Western Journal of Black Studies, 34(2) Summer 2010: 273-277.