The popularity of Black Panther should not be read as pivoting around an iconic male lead, but instead as an affirmation of the powerful women of Wakanda.
Author: Robyn C. Spencer, Mary Phillips, Angela D. LeBlanc-Ernest and Tracye A. Mathews
Robyn C. Spencer, Mary Phillips, Angela D. LeBlanc-Ernest, and Tracye A. Matthews, authors of some of the leading essays about gender and Black Power, founded the Intersectional Black Panther Party History Project in July 2016. Spencer is an associate professor of History at Lehman College/CUNY and author of The Revolution has Come: Black Power, Gender and the Black Panther Party in Oakland; Phillips is an assistant professor of Africana Studies at Lehman College/CUNY and author of a forthcoming biography of Panther leader Ericka Huggins, A Spirit on a Sword: Ericka Huggins’ Life as a Panther, Educator, and Activist; LeBlanc-Ernest is a Houston-based independent scholar and filmmaker working on a film, “The World is the Children’s Classroom” about the Black Panther Part's Oakland Community School; and Matthews is a Chicago-based historian, filmmaker, curator and associate director of the University of Chicago’s Center for Race, Politics and Culture.