Black Panther Party Oakland Community School (BPPOCS)

Project Description

In 1971, the Black Panther Party (BPP) founded its longest running social service program, the Oakland Community School (OCS), which operated for eleven years and served as a model for education for Black and poor children living in urban communities. 

Join us for a paid summer research fellowship (20 hours per week for 10 weeks, June 26-September 1) to mentor UCI undergraduate students and to contribute to a research and digital humanities project on the Oakland Community School. We are looking to hire two fellows. Specific tasks include:  

  • Help organize, promote, and support a guest speaker series 
  • Mentor UCI undergraduate summer research fellows
  • Manage and coordinate projects 
  • Attend and contribute to project meetings, workshops, reading groups, and trainings as needed
  • Contribute to an oral history project about the OCS by transcribing and/or editing interview transcripts 
  • Assist in creating a web-based year book project that features former students, teachers, and community supporters by exploring and archiving BPP and OCS-related documents, photos, and video
  • Assist in creating a physical and virtual Oakland Community School traveling exhibit

This research fellowship involves access to unpublished material which cannot be shared publicly without copyright clearance. You will be required to sign a confidentiality agreement as part of your participation in this project.

Contact

The project will be supervised by members of the Black Panther Oakland Community School: Community Archives, Activism, and Storytelling Research Cluster: 

●          Angela LeBlanc-Ernest (bpocsrc@angelaleblancernest.com), founder of the Oakland Community School Project, founder of the BPP Women’s Legacy Project, and co-founder of the Intersectional Black Panther Party Research Project.

●          Krystal Tribbett (ktribbet@uci.edu), Curator for Orange County Regional History and Research Librarian for Orange County

●          Judy Tzu-Chun Wu (j.wu@uci.edu), Professor of Asian American Studies and Director of the UCI Humanities Center