The Oakland Virtual Reality Project was founded in 2020 by Michael Roosevelt as a love letter to Oakland. While it is widely known that the Black Panther Party(BPP) was founded in Oakland, and over the years the movement building efforts of the organization have become more and more respected, there are very few permanent monuments that respect the contributions of the organization. The BPP VR project was designed to fill this void, using technology to preserve the history and tell part of the story.
Michael Roosevelt
Founder
Michael Roosevelt, a child of the Great Black Migration, grew up blocks from the San Francisco Black Panther Party office and was later a student at San Francisco State University (SFSU) of Professor Angela Davis, where the first Black Studies Department in the country was established. His passion for social justice was sparked by Professor Davis among many others.
Michael is also an art curator who focuses on artists from the African diaspora. Oakland VR project is an expansion of his curatorial practice employing advancements in virtual reality technology to tell stories often hidden in plain sight.