Meeting A Black Panther Party Legend: The Ericka Huggins Edition

Do you remember how old you were when you first became socially conscious; AKA woke? I had to have been somewhere between the ages of 10 & 12. This came about because at that time, social studies/history class was one of the most boring things to me in all creation. Not to mention that at this age, I very much had the Napoleon Bonaparte “History is a set of lies agreed upon” mentality. But once the curriculum got up to that Harlem Renaissance era and Black Power Movement, I was fully engaged. However, the problem here was that those old school textbooks only dedicated a few paragraphs to the subject. And of course for me that wasn’t enough.

So throughout my intermediate and high school years, I consumed all the content I could get my hands on about the Black Power Movement; starting with Malcolm X speech anthologies, autobiographies and memoirs written by leaders of the Black Panther Party (BPP) and even movies written, produced and directed by super pro Black creators like Melvin and Mario Van Peebles and Spike Lee. I then moved on to be a double major at Syracuse University in Psychology and (yep you guessed it) African American Studies. Little did I know that someday in the distant future, I would actually be in the presence of a Black Panther Party legend; one miss Ericka THE Huggins.
Disclaimer: Let me just say this. Even though I do have said SU Bachelors Degree prominently displayed upon my living room wall above my student desk…that thing is almost a decade old. So I don’t profess to be an expert in anything at this point! But I still wanted to recount the details of this experience in the most thoughtful way I could.

So Boom…it was the 3rd of March 2016 and I had recently learned from a friend/former neighbor that the Schomburg Center in Harlem was having an event where Ericka Huggins was going to be one of the guest speakers. So we just sashayed our woke Black and Brown selves right on over there together. Shoutout to Jay Espy and the People Power Movement (PPM); Educate. Agitate. Organize (peoplepowermovement.tumblr.com) I sure have had some fun and interesting times with the youths of PPM over the last couple years. But back to the topic at hand.

The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture has a monthly education series called Conversations in Black Freedom Studies which is a round table discussion panel of authors and experts in Black history. “This series introduces a new paradigm that challenges the older geography, leadership, ideology, culture and chronology of Civil Rights historiography.” (blackfreedomstudies.org)

Each month a different topic is addressed and the central theme of the one we attended was titled “What is the story of women in the Black Panther Party?” They also talked a lot about the Oakland Community School (OCS) which was a ground-breaking, community run child development center and elementary school founded by (yep you guessed it) the BPP. This panel featured distinguished Lehman College assistant professors Robyn Spencer, Mary Phillips and of course, renowned human rights activist, educator, writer, poet, former political prisoner and Black Panther Party leader Ericka Huggins.

Afterwards was a book signing where I purchased “Want To Start A Revolution? Radical Black Women In The Black Freedom Struggle”; and spoke briefly with the three amazingly awesome sauce panelists. I can’t even fully articulate the level of excitement and awe spilling out from my soul as I stood there on that line waiting to meet and greet with the great Ericka Huggins. She has such a warm aura about her; and her cadence is so calm and tranquil. She definitely doesn’t look at all like what she’s been through. It was quite the epic night! How about that for a first time at The Schomburg?

XoXo

Original Post Date: July 20, 2017