The Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation Receives a $200,000 Gift For Black Panther Party Legacy Project
Oakland, Ca, June 8, 2020 –
Fredrika Newton and the Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation (HPNF) announces an anonymous gift of $200,000 to support its three-pronged Black Panther Legacy Project that includes building the Black Panther Party Monument, the Black Power Museum for the People, and digitizing and preserving 400 issues (13,000 pages) of The Black Panther newspaper for online and mobile access.
“My hope is that the youth have a lineage that they can claim and actually put their hands on and learn from,” said HPNF President Fredrika Newton. “I don’t want these figures to become mythological. I hope it becomes a personal history for the youth where they can see how the Panthers impacted their communities and the people they hold dear. This $200,000 will allow the Foundation to inch towards that goal. ”
The Black Panther Legacy Monument
The Foundation is building a $5M monument to honor the people who laid their lives on the line to feed families in their communities, educate their children, provide free sickle cell testing, train a generation of organizers, academics, and politicians, and fight for a freer world. The BPP Monument will be the first time Black Panther history will be built into Oakland’s landscape. The Foundation will lead the charge to erect a monument that honors the legacy of the Black Panther Party and shapes the identity of Oakland for the next century.
The Black Power Museum for the People
The Black Power Museum for the People will place specific focus on curating content and experiences that showcase the extraordinary women that drove much of the Black Power movement and unsung community members whose tireless work made the Black Panther Party a success. The Foundation will design and build an interactive permanent museum that leverages new technology to tell the dynamic history of the Black Panther Party and its impact on the world.Digitizing the newspapers is the first phase in creating a virtual museum prior to building a brick and mortar one.
Black Panther Newspaper
The Black Panther Intercommunal News Service was an influential and revolutionary newsweekly that documented the Black Panther Party’s activities, history, and strategies. At its peak, the Party sold 170,000 copies of the newspaper per week. It ultimately became one of the most influential independent black newspapers in the United States, France, and Algeria known not only for its fearless reportage and analysis but its stunning photographs and illustrations. The digitization initiative seeks to make the entire fourteen-year collection of the newspaper (1967-1980) accessible and searchable online and through mobile platforms. The design will retain the look and feel of the publication with updates that make it user friendly for everyday people and scholars alike.
The Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation is a tax-deductible 501(c)3 founded in 1993 by David Hilliard and Fredrika Newton. Over the past 25+ years, they have led the Black Panther Party Legacy bus tours, consulted on films, published books, and have been featured in the SF Chronicle and KQED.
To learn more about the legacy project and make a donation, please visit their website.
Contact: Xavier Buck, Deputy Director at xavier@hueypnewton.org