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The former Kasper's Hot Dogs, located at 4521 Telegraph Ave., is photographed Sept. 21, 2022, in Oakland. Black Panther Party co-founder Huey P. Newton and his wife Fredrika Newton ate at the hot dog stand weekly.

Photo of the Original Kasper’s hot dog stand on Telegraph Avenue taken in the 1980s.

Photo of the Original Kasper’s hot dog stand on Telegraph Avenue taken in the 1980s.

An undated photo of the Original Kasper's hot dog stand in Oakland.

North Oakland could soon have an art installation honoring the Black Panther Party and its roots in the Temescal neighborhood, at a site threaded with common history: the Kasper’s Hot Dogs restaurant dating back to the 1940s, shuttered for two decades but slated to reopen in the coming months.

Most of Oakland’s vibrant murals honoring the legacy of the Black Panther Party can be found in West Oakland - where the group was known for operating its popular free breakfast program at a church, where it kept its headquarters and where members in black leather jackets and black berets once patrolled the streets armed with rifles and pistols.

However, while a bust honoring party co-founder Huey P. Newton was unveiled last year in West Oakland, the city has no plaques, statues or permanent art installations that commemorate the group as a whole, according to Newton’s widow and former party member Fredrika Newton.

That includes Temescal in North Oakland, where Newton was born and raised, where the group was founded, and where gentrification has pushed Black and working class residents out over the years.

But a new project organized by the Temescal Telegraph Business Improvement District aims to create a permanent art installation that would not only honor the Black Panther Party’s legacy, but highlight its history in Temescal, which today is a thriving corridor with a buzzy food scene.

The group is hosting a series of public conversations in coming months to get input on the design of the installation, which it aims to put at the historical Kasper’s Hot Dogs restaurant, opened by Armenian immigrant Kasper Koojoolian in 1943 as the sole occupant of a triangular traffic island where Telegraph and Shattuck avenues intersect.

It served Chicago-style dogs until 2003, when then-owner Harry Yaglijian, Koojoolian’s grandson, closed it to do repairs — but due to the expense made the closure indefinite, he said.

In its heyday, it was frequented by Black Panther Party members, as well as numerous artists and politicians including members of the Tower of Power band, actor and comedian Danny Glover, and Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums.

Fredrika Newton said her husband grew up going to Kasper’s, and they and their son went there about once a week to eat hot dogs, potato chips and soda.

Yaglijian said he remembers introducing himself to Newton and talking to him. “Everybody used to come in that place,” he said. “When the Panthers were prominent, (Huey Newton) used to come in.”

The former Kasper's Hot Dogs, located at 4521 Telegraph Ave., is photographed on Wednesday, September 21, 2022, in Oakland, Calif. Black Panther Party co-founder Huey P. Newton and his wife Fredrika Newton ate at the hot dog stand weekly.

The building has sat abandoned, covered in graffiti, for years. But in June, new owners announced plans to renovate and reopen the eatery by the end of this year.

“This would really be a big moment in Temescal to actually have a dedicated memorial to the party, to really root their history there,” said Katie Larson, executive director of the Temescal Telegraph Business Improvement District.

To roll out what it has dubbed the Temescal Roots Project, the group is working with the creative agency Made in Color and the Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation to host a series of conversations and workshops with community members, business owners, artists, historians and more, to help co-design an art installation outside Kasper’s.

The first event is scheduled for Sunday at Root’d in the 510, a cannabis dispensary and consumption lounge at 4444 Telegraph Ave.

Larson said the goal is to create an installation with help from the community.

“Depending on what we learn and gather from our community events, the installation could be something as permanent as a sculpture garden or more temporary and experiential,” Larson said.

The project will also highlight several other historical locations in Temescal with a connection to the Black Panther Party.

“It's not a history that's widely known,” said Fredrika Newton.

Given the gentrification and demographic change in North Oakland over the years, Newton said it is important that current residents know the party’s history and “celebrate that history and the young men and women who made supreme sacrifices to serve that community.”

Here are a few other locations in Temescal and North Oakland with connections to the Black Panther Party that will be highlighted in the project:

The North Oakland Senior Center, originally Merritt College’s north campus. The building, at 5714 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, is where Bobby Seale and Huey Newton started the Black Panther Party.

The Black Panther Party, originally called the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, was founded in 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, who met as students at Merritt College.

Merritt’s former campus was located in North Oakland at 5714 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, which now houses the Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute and the North Oakland Senior Center. In 1971, the college moved to its current location in the East Oakland hills.

As students, Newton and Seale founded the Soul Student Advisory Council on campus that urged school officials to create Black studies course, said Dr. Siri Brown, professor of African American Studies at Merritt College.

A book focused on the Black Panther Party, The Legacy of the Panthers, is displayed in a case inside the North Oakland Senior Center, originally Merritt College?•s north campus, on Wednesday, September 21, 2022, in Oakland, Calif. The building, located at 5714 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, is where Bobby Seale and Huey Newton started the Black Panther Party.

As a result of their efforts, Merritt in 1967 became the first college in the nation to create an African American studies program, before San Francisco State University created the country’s first Ethnic Studies department, said Brown.

“Part of the organizing was to not just bring the department but to bring more African American faculty and administration on campus, so they advocated to bring the first Black president in the community college system to Merritt College and they had an influential counselor that also was hired,” said Brown.

In 2001, Merritt College renamed its student lounge at its East Oakland campus after Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, according to college president David M. Johnson.

It’s All Good Bakery, at 5622 Martin Luther King Jr Way in Oakland, was the first headquarters for the Black Panther Party.

Years before Kim Cloud opened It’s All Good Bakery on Martin Luther King Jr. Way in the mid-1990s, steps away from the former Merritt College campus, the building housed the first headquarters of the Black Panther Party.

As a child, Cloud said, he had benefited from the party’s free breakfast program - but he wasn’t aware that he was buying a piece of history until Seale walked into the bakery one day and told him the history of the location.

“I said, ‘Hi, Bobby. My name is Kim Cloud and I used to be a kid (as) a part of the breakfast program,’” Cloud, 60, recalled.

“Being part of the breakfast program and now having a part of history that I was a part of growing up makes me feel good,” he said. “The things that they stood for, I’m still doing right now today, giving back to my community.”

A Black Panther Party Pop-Up Exhibit designed by curator Lisbet Tellefsen is located inside It?•s All Good Bakery, located at 5622 Martin Luther King Jr Way, on Wednesday, September 21, 2022, in Oakland, Calif. The site was the first headquarters for the Black Panther Party.

He worked with the Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation and independent curator Lisbet Tellefsen to create a gallery wall commemorating the Black Panther Party inside the bakery. Copies of the Black Panther Party newspaper and a poster detailing the group’s platform and 10-point program are displayed on a bright blue wall.

The building currently houses the bakery, a barbershop and four residential units on the second floor. Cloud plans to redevelop the site to build more housing, but told The Chronicle the bakery and a wall honoring the party will be included in the plan.

A vault inside Shoe Palace, located at 4900 Telegraph Ave. in Oakland. The building was formerly Lloyds Bank California, later known as Sanwa Bank, where people donated money to the Dr. Huey P. Newton Memorial Fund.

When Newton was fatally shot in West Oakland in 1989, Fredrika Newton said the party did not have enough money for funeral costs. The group placed a small notice in a local newspaper asking people to donate to a memorial fund through what was then the Lloyds Bank California on the corner of Telegraph Avenue and 49th Street.

Fredrika said her mother, Arlene Slaughter, had a strong relationship with Lloyds. Slaughter was a prominent leader in the fair housing movement and many of her clients were members of the Black Panther Party, according to media reports at the time.

“People walked in there with all of their little checks,” said Newton, adding that she kept most of the notes and letters that people across the region included with their donations.

“Some of them would be for $5 or $3,” she said. “But all of the funds that were collected as donations were from the Bay Area.”

A Shoe Palace store now sits on the corner of Telegraph Ave. and 49th St., although a vault has been kept intact inside the store.

A Black Panther Party sign is posted at the corner of 55th and Market streets in Oakland. The inscription reads: “After several students from Santa Fe Elementary School nearby were killed at this busy intersection, the demand for a traffic signal by the Anti-Poverty Center and the Black Panther Party began in June 0f 1967. When the Oakland City council notified the community that a traffic signal would take a year and a half to erect, a small cadre of armed Black Panthers stopped motorists and personally escorted students across the busy intersection. Installation of the traffic signal began on August 1, 1967, less than two months later. No further automobile related deaths or injuries occurred at this location during that period.”

The intersection of Market and 55th streets was where the Black Panther Party for Self Defense held its first social action. After several students from nearby Santa Fe Elementary School were reportedly killed or injured by cars while crossing the street in June 1967, party members and activists from the former Anti-Poverty Center urged the city of Oakland to install a traffic light.

When officials told them it would take a year and a half to put up a traffic signal, armed party members acted as crossing guards by stopping motorists and helping children walk through the intersection. Less than two months later, the city installed a traffic light.

“No further automobile related deaths or injuries occurred at this location during that period,” reads a small blue sign on a light pole at the intersection, commemorating the successful campaign.

Jessica Flores (she/her) is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jessica.flores@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jesssmflores

Jessica Flores is a reporter for The San Francisco Chronicle. Before joining The Chronicle in 2021, she worked for USA Today, NPR affiliate KPCC and Curbed LA. Originally from L.A., she received her master's degree in journalism from the University of Southern California and a bachelor's degree from Mount Saint Mary's University in Los Angeles.