Dr. Mary Frances Phillips is a historian of Black political life whose work addresses Black women’s activism, carceral conditions, and practices of wellness. She is an Associate Professor of African American Studies at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Her interdisciplinary research analyzes how Black women activists confronted political repression, incarceration, and state power in the late twentieth century. Reframing Black political history, this work foregrounds Black women’s integrated practices of mind, body, and spirit as foundational to freedom struggles.
Phillips’s 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, one of the longest-serving women members of the organization. Black Panther Woman historicizes women’s prison organizing, resistance, and state repression and was named a finalist for both the 2026 Book Prize awarded by the Association for the Study of African American Life and History and the 2026 Lambda Literary Award in Lesbian Memoir/Biography.
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, New Black Man (in Exile), The Opinion Pages, and Black Perspectives.
Her work has been featured in TIME Magazine, Ms. Magazine, the Detroit Free Press, the Illinois News Bureau, the New-York Historical Society’s Women at the Center blog series, BronxNet Cable Television, Michigan Public Radio’s Stateside, Connecticut Public Radio, WBAI Pacifica Radio in New York City, Black Agenda Radio, and podcasts including Therapy for Black Girls, The Black Studies Podcast, and Drafting the Past: The Art and Craft of Writing History.
Phillips was selected as a 2025–2026 University of Illinois System OpEd Project Public Voices Fellow. Her research has been supported by the Black, Race, and Ethnic Studies Initiative Grant at the City University of New York, the Institute for Advanced Study at the University of Notre Dame, the American Association of University Women Postdoctoral Research Leave Fellowship, the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics at the City University of New York Graduate Center, and the Faculty Fellowship Publication Program at the City University of New York.
Her current book project examines the women of the L.A. Rebellion and Black independent cinema, and she is developing a second line of research on Black women, sports, and histories of the body. A native of Detroit, Michigan, Phillips brings these commitments to Black life, culture, and embodiment to her scholarship.
"I will tell you what freedom is to me. No fear!" –Nina Simone
Black Panther Woman: The Political and Spiritual Life of Ericka Huggins
“A remarkable story of awakening, commitment, grit, and fearlessness in the wake of personal pain, grassroots struggle, and state violence. This first-ever historical biography of Ericka Huggins is itself a meditation on the pertinence and power of spiritual wellness and encourages us to consider what a radically holistic movement for liberation might need. Wholly original and illuminating!”
––Rhonda Y. Williams, author of Concrete Demands: The Search for Black Power in the 20th Century
Articles & Essays
♀︎ WSQ: BLACK LOVE
♀︎Women in the Black Panther Party
♀︎ If Beale Street Could Talk, It Would Say Women Matter Too
♀︎ Community Control and The 1968 Teacher Strikes In NYC at 50: A Roundtable, “Students today are curious about Black Power”
♀︎ The Fearless Nature of Remaking Black PowerRead Dr. Phillips Public Writings
♀︎ ‘Detroit’ Is The Most Irresponsible And Dangerous Movie Of The Year
Read Dr. Phillips Public Writings