Back in May, our sister site, Shadow & Act, reported that director Antoine Fuqua will helm a biopic of Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton.

Over years, the Black Panther Party has gained a somewhat negative image, with its detractors highlighting its revolutionary nature and some of its more violent aspects.

But like Fuqua, the University of California Berkeley wants to change all of that, and is making a conscientious effort to honoring the legacy of BPP.

News One reports that the university will be receiving a federal funding grant of $98,000 for the "Black Panther Party Research, Interpretation & Memory Project."

Per the funding announcement, the project will last from August 30, 2017 to September 30, 2019, and will include “a comprehensive collection of local BPP history through acquisition of additional materials from diverse sources including video oral history, photographs, news coverage and other media; disseminating publications that incorporate primary sources from BPP organizational records.”

The project will be led by Dr. Ula Taylor, the chair of the Department of African American Studies at UC Berkeley. Dr. Taylor plans to involve several notable BPP members in the project, such as J. Tarika Lewis.

Lewis was the first woman to join the BPP in Oakland.

The project also plans to "compile an annotated bibliography of information (oral histories, literature, art, exhibits or other media/format) as a resource for understanding the complex history of the Black Panther Party" and "will collect additional oral histories, and additionally, interviews will be conducted with people who were not yet born in 1966 but are eager to reflect on how the events affected their lives, their families and their future."

Overall, the project hopes to "bridge generational, cultural and regional gaps in dialogue on race relations, economic inclusion and opportunity and other critical imperatives that divide diverse populations."

We're here for it!

University of California Berkeley

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