Deconstructing “Black Jezebel”: Ericka Huggins, Martyrdom, and the New Haven Panther Trials

Among the women of the Black Panther Party, Ericka Huggins has stood out not only as the widow of John Huggins, but an important activist in her own right who helped found the New Haven chapter of the Black Panther Party and the Oakland Community School. Huggins was catapulted into the national eye after the murder of Alex Rackley, a suspected informer in the New Haven chapter and she was put on trial along with Bobby Seale for her life.

During the course of the trial and afterwards, Ericka Huggins became a divisive symbol of Black Panther womanhood with her supporters hailing her as a grieving mother and widow who made the ultimate sacrifice for the Party and her detractors painting her as a lustful, seductive siren and cold-blooded murderer. The various representations of Ericka Huggins reveal fiery debates about the meaning of gender, sexuality and race in the black power movement. This presentation probes how the various representations of Ericka Huggins in the media and the memory legacy of the New Haven Trials reveal the contested nature of radical black womanhood and martyrdom.