Learn more about Angela D. LeBlanc-Ernest's history, current projects, and upcoming events in the following sections.
Angela D. LeBlanc-Ernest is an independent scholar, documentarian, multi-media content creator, oral historian, and community archivist whose projects focus on 20th-century social movement history, gender, education, and culture. She graduated from Harvard University and Stanford University, and spent more than 30 years engaged in projects that combine oral history collection with academic research.
She has spent her career bridging the divide between academic institutions and communities by developing and participating in projects that have public history components and involve narrators themselves in the process.
Her writings have appeared in peer-reviewed books, journals, and public facing publications such as Vibe Magazine, Colorlines, Souls, Ms. Magazine, and Black Youth Project. Angela has presented her work in academic conferences, K-12 institutions, universities across the United States, and community spaces such as New York’s Schomburg Library Conversations in Black Freedom Studies, the University of Chicago’s Logan Museum, and the de Young Museum in San Francisco.
Angela began her academic career with an award-winning Harvard University undergraduate thesis on women in the Black Panther Party. Following this prestigious award, she expanded her research to include the BPP’s Community Survival Programs during her graduate school program at Stanford University. She has advised undergraduate and graduate students, collaborated with various educational institutions, and currently directs and co-directs several research projects related to the Black Panther Party. In 2020, she served as a historical consultant to the West Oakland Mural Project and Mini-Museum’s Women of the Black Panther Party Activity Book. In 2021 and 2022, she served as a photographic archival and oral history consultant for Comrade Sisters: Women of the Black Panther Party (2022), co-authored by ericka huggins and Stephen Shames. Angela also wrote and designed the Comrade Sisters: Women of the Black Panther Party’s companion Research and Discussion Guide.
Angela is the recipient of a 2022-2023 Oral History Association and National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for her OCS oral history project work, where her most recent research project focuses on the Oakland Community School, one of the Black Panther Party’s educational institutions and flagship Survival Programs. She is the founding director of The OCS Project LLC, formed to curate OCS history, create academic and public-facing archival projects, and collaborate around issues of education. Revolving around the history and principles of the Oakland Community School as a springboard, Angela is also a co-leader of The Black Panther Oakland Community School: Community Archives, Activism, and Storytelling Research Cluster at the University of California Irvine. The BPOCSRC’s focus centers community and activism in research, preservation, and storytelling.
Angela is a loving wife, mother of 3 children, and caregiver to 3 rescue dogs and 1 adventurous cat. In addition to her work as a scholar, she loves reading and watching engaging stories. In her future work, she strives to platform the voices of living history and honoring the legacies of Black Panthers who have passed, carrying their legacy in their own words.
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