The National Association of Black Journalists UC Berkeley Chapter
& The Reva and David Logan Gallery of Documentary Photography at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism

invite you to

COMRADE SISTERS: WOMEN OF THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY
Featuring a photo book by Stephen Shames and Ericka Huggins

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Ericka Huggins, Judy Juanita & Madalynn Rucker in Conversation With Angela Davis.

Emcee: Williamena Kwapo (’23), NABJ Chapter, UC Berkeley

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Watch the Event 

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7:00PM Introductory remarks by Williamena Kwapo (’23), NABJ Chapter, UC Berkeley.

7:20PM Photographer Stephen Shames discusses images from the book.

7:35PM Ericka Huggins, Judy Juanita, Madalynn Rucker in conversation with Angela Davis followed by a Q&A with the audience.

8:30PM Books for sale/signing in the Sibley lobby.

Event Speakers

Williamena Kwapo

Williamena Kwapo (’23)

Williamena Kwapo is a second year masters candidate at Berkeley Journalism where she studies video journalism. She enjoys covering how race and identity impacts a range of topics like education, health & wellness, and technology. She has worked as an associate producer at the LA Times curating films for the Short Documentary Unit as well as a reporter at Education Week and Oakland North covering K-12 education. Williamena was raised in Detroit, MI and holds a bachelor degree from the University of Michigan. She plans to continue a career as a producer, writer, and documentary filmmaker upon graduation with her Masters in Journalism.

Angela Davis
Angela Y. Davis is known internationally for her ongoing work to combat all forms of oppression in the U.S. and abroad. Over the years she has been active as a student, teacher, writer, scholar, and activist/organizer. She is a living witness to the historical struggles of the contemporary era.

Professor Davis’s political activism began when she was a youngster in Birmingham, Alabama, and continued through her high school years in New York. But it was not until 1969 that she came to national attention after being removed from her teaching position in the Philosophy Department at UCLA as a result of her social activism and her membership in the Communist Party, USA. In 1970 she was placed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List on false charges, and was the subject of an intense police search that drove her underground and culminated in one of the most famous trials in recent U.S. history. During her sixteen-month incarceration, a massive international “Free Angela Davis” campaign was organized, leading to her acquittal in 1972.

During the last twenty-five years, Professor Davis has lectured in all of the fifty United States, as well as in Africa, Europe, the Caribbean, and the former Soviet Union. Her articles and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, and she is the author of nine books, including Angela Davis: An Autobiography; Women, Race, and Class; Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday; The Angela Y. Davis Reader; Are Prisons Obsolete?; a new edition of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass; and The Meaning of Freedom.

Judy Juanita
Novelist, poet, and essayist Judy Juanita’s poetry collection, Manhattan my ass, you’re in Oakland, won the American Book Award in 2021. Her semi-autobiographical novel, Virgin Soul, was published by Viking [2013]; its protagonist joins the Black Panther Party in the sixties in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her collection of short stories, The High Price of Freeways, won the 2021 Tartt Fiction Award is published in 2022. Her poem “Bling” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2012. Her essay, “The Gun as Performance Poem,” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2014. She teaches writing at University of
California, Berkeley.

Ericka C. Huggins
Ericka Huggins is an educator, Black Panther Party member, former
political prisoner, human rights advocate, and poet.

For 50 years, Ericka has used her life experiences in service to community.
From 1973-1981, she was director of the Black Panther Party’s Oakland
Community School. From 1990-2004 Ericka managed HIV/AIDS Volunteer
and Education programs. She also supported innovative mindfulness
programs for women and youth in schools, jails and prisons.

Ericka was professor of Sociology and African American Studies from 2008
through 2015 in the Peralta Community College District. From 2003 to 2011
she was professor of Women and Gender Studies at California State
Universities- East Bay and San Francisco.

Madalynn Carol Rucker 
Madalynn Carol Rucker was born in New York City, raised in Los Angeles and moved to San Francisco at age 18. She was a member of the Black Panther Party from 1968-1974 and served as a proud rank and file comrade in San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland, California.

She credits her family and her experience in the Black Panther Party as her greatest joys and achievements. After leaving the Party, she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Washington, and a Master of Arts at Stanford University in Political Science. She is the founder and executive director of ONTRACK Program Resources, a social justice nonprofit agency that provides consulting, training and organizational development statewide, primarily in behavioral health fields, since 1997.

Stephen Shames
Stephen Shames uses photography to raise awareness of social issues, with a particular focus on child poverty and race.

Steve’s photographs are in the permanent collections of 40 major museums, including: Museum of Modern Art (MoMA); Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery; Smithsonian National Museum of African-American History and Culture; Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas, Austin; Metropolitan Museum; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; George Eastman Museum; Philadelphia Museum of Art; and Foundation Sindika Dokolo, Angola.

Steve is author of 15 monographs including: Power to the People: The World of the Black Panthers (Abrams, 2016); Bronx Boys (University of Texas); Outside the Dream, Pursuing the Dream, The Black Panthers (Aperture); Stephen Shames: Une Retrospective (Maison de la Photographie Robert Doisneu de Gentilly | Red Eye); Bronx Boys (FotoEvidence e-book); Free Angela, We Are America, I Like You Too, Some People (Quiddity, 2021); Facing Race (Moravian College); Transforming Lives (Star Bright Books); and Free to Grow (Columbia University).

Co-sponsored by
Berkeley Department of History
The Department of African American Studies
American Studies Department
The Othering & Belonging Institute
The American Cultures Center
Department of Gender & Women’s Studies
Ethnic Studies
&
The Fotovision Endowment
AAC Art Books

Please note: Masks are strongly encouraged while in Sibley Auditorium. We have individuals in our community who are immunocompromised (or who live with people who are) and we want to be as inclusive as possible to everyone studying/working/visiting campus.