Biography
Ericka Huggins was a leader of the New Haven, Connecticut chapter of the Black Panther Party. After the May 21, 1969 killing of Alex Rackley in a New Haven Panthers safe house — Rackley had been suspected internally of being a police informant — she was arrested with seven other Panthers. The federal prosecution charged Bobby Seale (who was not in New Haven at the time of the killing) and Huggins with the murder, kidnapping, and conspiracy. The trial of Seale and Huggins began in November 1970 and ran into May 1971. The jury deadlocked 10-2 for her acquittal and 11-1 for Seale s; Judge Harold Mulvey dismissed all charges with prejudice on May 25, 1971. She had been held in pretrial detention at the Niantic State Farm for Women in Connecticut for two years; her infant daughter Mai was raised in the Panther community during her detention.
After the trial she returned to Oakland and became the Director of the Oakland Community School from 1973 to 1981 — the BPP-founded K-6 school in East Oakland that won state and national education awards under her leadership. She has been a longtime educator and writer in the years since.
