The Pen of the Panther: Barriers and Freedom in the Prison Poetry of Ericka Huggins

“Humans get stuck in barriers, and just need to break them down,” argues Black Panther Party (BPP) activist and writer Ericka Huggins.¹ The metaphorical possibilities of this statement are robust, but the literal message is that barriers to freedom must be demolished. Huggins’s life and work illustrate the significance of black women’s labor both in terms of activism and writing. She was deeply involved in the BPP, fought against the endemic racism and colonialism in her social environment through teaching, and wrote prolifically in prison about barriers to freedom. However, the historical memory of black power/liberation has not fully acknowledged and represented her political work, including her cultural productions. Her narrative within the movement enriches the mainstream narrative of it.

To date, there is a dearth of literary scholarship on Ericka Huggins’s poetry. Donald Freed’s comprehensive coverage of Huggins’s trial in New Haven with Bobby Seale and Fiona Thompson’s recent oral history project are two notable exceptions.² Angela Y. Davis, Judith A. Scheffler, and David Hilliard reprinted some of Ericka Huggins’s poems in an attempt to draw critical attention to them, though they do not provide literary commentary.³ In addition, Catherine Roraback’s collection of Huggins’s papers contains her prison writings, her legal files, and other documentation of her trial and imprisonment.⁴ Huggins’s own articles written for The Black Panther: Black Community News Service and her sociological thesis on the Oakland Community School conceived and maintained by the Panthers demonstrate that some of the best information on her has been self-produced, along with her recent scholarly article with Angela Le-Blanc-Ernest.⁵ Yet no literary criticism exists on Huggins’s work.⁶

This article recognizes Ericka Huggins’s work as a noteworthy example of political poetry written by an imprisoned black woman during the black power/liberation era. It begins with biographical background on Huggins to better understand her overlapping personal, political, and creative lives. Then it provides archival information from both alternative and mainstream news as well as some secondary sources to contextualize this historical moment.⁷ It moves on to discuss original interview data related to Huggins’s writing process.⁸ The interview serves as a supplemental mode of inquiry that privileges Huggins’s own voice and interpretation of her life and work. Lastly, it closes with a literary analysis of Insights and Poems, a collection she coauthored with Huey P. Newton that was written in prison, which foregrounds the activist nature of her autobiographical work. Using formalist and materialist criticism helps weave a connective thread between Huggins’s life, activism, and writing. Her work functions as a corrective to masculinist narratives of black power/liberation and apolitical interpretations of autobiographical writing.

History and Her-Story: An Overview of Ericka Huggins’s Resistance in the BPP

Many historians have written about black women’s involvement in the civil rights movements. Charles Payne documents women’s roles in community-based organizing around voting in the south.⁹ Charles Payne and Belinda Robnett both label black women’s activism as “bridge” work.¹⁰ “Bridge” work was done in local communities and involved no formal leadership roles. Informal leaders were crucial. They executed much organizing work, though were invisible to the mainstream media’s gaze. Barbara Ransby also writes about the invaluable contributions of Ella Baker but uses Baker’s own term “spade” work instead of “bridge” work.¹¹ Ransby documents Baker’s political work, especially in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Similarly, Chana Kai Lee’s work on Fannie Lou Hamer approaches women’s activist work.¹² Cynthia Griggs Fleming, Bernice McNair Barnett, Anne Standley, LaVerne Gyant, Sara Evans, Kristin Anderson-Bricker, and Bettye Collier-Thompson and V. P. Franklin all discuss important yet less famous women involved in the early civil rights period, as well.¹³

The black power/liberation movement...