By Ayana Rashed: For More Info, Go Here…
The Black Veterans Project (BVP), a veteran-led, multi-organizational startup, today announced the official launch of their IndieGoGo campaign to raise funds for a full-length documentary recounting the experiences of current and former Black servicemembers, from the Vietnam War to present-day conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Co-founded by veterans Kyle Bibby and Richard Brookshire, BVP has a mission to preserve the legacy of the 2.5 million Black veterans living in the United States. Through the creation of a full-length documentary and digital archive of oral histories of Black veterans from all walks of life, BVP hopes to raise awareness of racial justice issues in the military and post-service.
The film will focus on the firsthand accounts of Black servicemembers across the country and from all branches of military service. These stories will be supplemented with data pertaining to racial inequities in the military justice system and access to Veterans Affairs (VA) services, and contextualized within concurrent racial justice movements taking place in each era, including the Civil Rights Movement and the Movement for Black Lives.
The goal of the IndieGoGo campaign is to raise $100,000 to support early production costs for the documentary, which includes traveling to conduct interviews nationwide.
The film will be the first step and a major cornerstone in BVP’s larger historical archiving and advocacy work. All content collected and created during the development of the documentary will be used in the film and/or stored in the Black Veterans Archive, the historical preservation program of the Black Veterans Project.
