Biography
Early Life
Ericka Jenkins Huggins was born in Washington, D.C., on January 5, 1948. She graduated from high school in 1966. She attended Cheyney State College before transferring to Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, where she studied education. She met John Huggins in college and married him in 1968.
She later completed a master’s thesis in sociology that had a model for student-centered, community-based, tuition-free education. Her goal was to address the lasting effects of racial and gender trauma rooted in American slavery. This laid the foundation for her work as a human rights activist, poet, and educator. While a student at Lincoln University, she took part in the Black Student Congress, a campus organization that at the time did not welcome female members. She pushed back against that too.
Religious Faith and Activism
Huggins began her activist work in 1963 when she was 15 years old. She joined the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The march called for the rights of people who had been pushed to the margins of American life.
She and her husband joined the Black Panther Party (BPP) and became well-known members of the organization. Huggins took on several roles within the Party. She edited its newspaper, the Black Panther Intercommunal News Service. Her husband was murdered on the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1969.
Huggins and her daughter Mai moved to New Haven, Connecticut. She started a local chapter of the Black Panther Party. On May 22, 1969, she and Black Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seale were charged with the kidnapping and murder of fellow party member Alex Rackley. The trial ran from October 1970 to May 1971. It ended in a mistrial, and all charges were dismissed. Huggins was released on May 25, 1971.
She served on the Party’s Central Committee. Huggins went on to co-found the Party’s first liberation school. It was a community education program that took a new approach to learning. She became director of the Black Panther Party’s Oakland Community School and managed its daily operations from 1973 to 1981. She helped write the school’s curriculum and grant and oversaw the staff. She also traveled across the country to share the school’s educational methods.
Huggins co-authored a book of poetry called Insights and Poems with BPP leader Huey P. Newton in 1975. Her writing has appeared in many magazines and books. It reflects her belief in freedom and the deep connection between education and liberation.
She became the first woman and the first Black person appointed to the Alameda County Board of Education in 1976. She worked for children with cognitive, emotional, and physical disabilities and supported young people in the county’s school districts who are in jail.
Her commitment to social justice has continued for decades. She has spoken on education, spirituality, feminism, prison reform, and the challenges facing queer youth of color.
For 15 years, Huggins taught hatha yoga and meditation through the Siddha Yoga Prison Project. She worked with people who are incarcerated, public school children, and college students in California. She also spent five years with the Mind/Body Medical Institute. This affiliate of Harvard Medical School offers similar relaxation practices. She continues to teach these methods to parents and children today.
She was the first woman to serve as a practical service volunteer coordinator at the Shanti Project and has shown commitment to queer youth of color living with HIV/AIDS. She has taught women’s studies at California State University, East Bay, and sociology at Laney College and Berkeley City College. She currently works as a facilitator with World Trust, an organization that uses documentary films to explore the impact of racial inequality.
Huggins is the partner of Lisbet Tellefsen. They have three children and two grandchildren. She believes literacy is the key to breaking the cycle left by slavery and sees education as a basic human right.
