ROOTS OF OAKLAND:

Gregory Thomas

The city of Oakland contains one of the most diverse neighborhoods in the Bay Area. The flatlands stretch around Oakland and represent the lowest elevation in the city. It also represent class, and ethnic boundaries institutionalized within the city. My family found themselves  settling in the Bay Area in the 1950s. My father’s family, once long time residents of Louisiana, came to the Bay Area for the wartime industries that sprung up in Oakland and Richmond during the second half of the 20th century. They settled in the Oakland flatlands on 66th ave., which they lived in through the turn of the century. The world tends to prop-up the violence and poverty as the defining features of this community. What people tend to forget about the neighborhood is that it is not made up of vices and issues, and that it is also made up of people making changes and adapting to their environment. When looking at the late 20th century, we see residents within these neighborhoods adapting to economic deinvestment, institutional discrimination, and violence in many organic and localized ways. Scholar Gretchen Lemke-Santangelo writes about how housing discrimination was practiced within Oakland and with the adjacent towns and districts within the Bay Area during the 20th century. This type of social/racial control tied African Americans to the flatlands. They also addresses this in talking about how housing discrimination created the racial makeup of Oakland. One way this occurred was in the diverting federal funding from public housing in black neighborhoods into works available to only white residents. Another way is the segregation of entire neighborhoods, and apartment complexes that helped create the racial makeup of neighborhoods of the 50s and 60s. The streaming of highways, and public transportation away from areas of black economic neighborhoods, also contributed to these economic conditions. Importantly this distinction is relatable in the economic geography of the Bay Area, in which the economic conditions, and class makeup greatly increases in the hills of Oakland as compared to the flatlands. Another scholar in the field, Marlynn Johnson, has analyzed how these economic and societal developments affected the people living within the flatland landscape. Between the periods of 1940s-1950s Oakland’s black population increased from 24% to 67%, however the amount of available housing wasn’t satisfying the demand. Out of 50,000 government housing projects within the Bay Area, only 300 were open for black buyers. Local housing policies also relegated black families to specific neighborhoods. What these scholars highlight is that the demographic conditions and the economic divestment from the city are a result of institutional conditions that continued to marginalized black families to the flatland. This economic de-investment had a negative effect on social services within the flatlands.

Scholars also talk extensively about how women led community organizations that addressed the most dire issues within the community in the flatlands. Jennifer Tilton writes a lot about women in the community working to develop after school programs, and spaces for youth in the urban landscape. She also addresses the narratives that surrounded the idea of parenting in the working class, urban black family. In confronting these structural issues within Oakland, the concept of child rearing is conflated with the neighborhood, and in the parenting style of its residences. She highlights how in 1970, in which attacks by conservative and democratic politicians alike, against what they say is the “nanny state”. In which they fought for cuts in family aid, and reduced funding for welfare and social services. This produced a chain reaction for greater community activism due to lack of resources and violence. Jennifer highlights the prominence that Black women had within community organizing.

In this paper I’ll be expanding on this scholarly work, paying particular attention to smaller organizations of women, and individuals within the flatlands community. Women were a leading force in creating institutions to bring about change and greater access to resources on a more localized level. One group that sticks out within this research was the Fannie Wall house Organization. What was once located on 815 Linden Street, the Fannie Wall association focused their attention on the state of children within West Oakland, and in particular the colored orphan children within the community. Founded in 1918, its primary goal was to provide housing and resources for the orphaned, neglected, and working class children within the community. It operated as both an orphanage and a nursery for working class families who couldn’t access other daycare facilities due to the color of their skin. Working with the community this group fundraised, and created a bureaucracy dedicated to running this facility.

Hosting annual balls was a way for them to raise money, and connect with the network of business owners and workers within the neighborhood. The program lists a variety of contributions from local businesses, organizations, and individual contributors who got ad spaces for their involvement. The pamphlet also features a photo of the board of directors, and a list of various director officers, all of which women. A page within the pamphlet for their third annual charity ball, gives a brief description of the services offered by the program and highlights the affiliation with greater Californian groups, It reads, “Since its founding in 1914 by the Northern Federation of Colored Women’s clubs, the Fannie Wall Home has been a powerful aid in the fight against delinquency and has helped preserve and strengthen family ties of the community”.

Providing a “homelike atmosphere”, this home provided a full day's meals to youth, and recreational activities to nursery attendees. Its yearly operating expenses at the time was over $26,000, $11,000 of which was coming from the community itself. With this charity ball, they were intending to fill the 15,000 gap in funding to expand the operating base to a new building, and improve the services they already offer. They make sure to highlight that, “The agency does not discriminate against children because of color, race, creed or religion.'' However, “This area has a large Negro population; for this reason the clients are primarily from the Negro race.”

When looking at this historical document, it is evident that the main people supporting this type of program were the residents themselves and not the city or state. Advertisements directly place the support of this organization in local businesses, and community members of Oakland. Its directors were all women, who affiliated themselves with greater organizations of Black women within Northern California. Flatland occupants were deeply invested in the community they were cultivating. The youth, their success, and the development and securing of the family unit within the neighborhood. Groups of women were pivotal in this development, and local businesses reacted to this organization by funding it.

By 1957, however, things changed within the organization, adapting to changing social conditions to address community needs at the time. In a summary report, the organization details a change and restructuring of services within the Fannie Wall Home. Mostly undergoing staff and administrative issues, they relate that the primary goals of fundraising dominated the organization's priorities. In addition, they relate how in 1955 they discontinued the nursery program, to concentrate on the development of the residential services to children within the community. The addition of a caseworker, psychologist, and tutoreers were instilled to help orphaned children. In one excerpt they state, “ The home is fortunate in having the voluntary services of the Mills College psychologist”, showing a working relationship between the academic institutions at a higher level. It is also evident within this report that they’ve maintained relationships with Cole Elementary school in Oakland, and with nearby middle and high schools. They also mention that these relationships, “have a good deal to offer to the Fannie Wall children, most of whom have had a history of school difficulty and or truancy.”

What this shows is that the school institutions within the neighborhood of West Oakland, had a mutual interest in working with community activists to provide for the most vulnerable youth within the community. It is also apparent that the behavior of the children was important to educators and educational advocates. In 1948 they were particularly invested in the funding of nursery services that the Fannie Wall houses had been providing. In 1957 the needs seem to have been met one way or the other. This organization developed a localized approach to meeting the needed resources within the local community. While it seems like it was city-wide interest in providing funding for the development of spaces for children and youth, it was the community members who were organizing and adapting to the changes in neighborhood needs.

We also see the needs of people most vulnerable on the other end of the spectrum, the needs of the elderly addressed as well. Similarly, the monetary needs being met by the community members themselves. The Home for the Aged and Infirm Colored People was located on 5245 Underwood Ave. , a little more south of the Fannie Wall house, in the present day location of Mills college. Within the remains of board minutes gives historians a better understanding of the inner working of the organization. On the top of the fourth page in the minutes from July 1st 1937, we see the board completely made up of women.

Communicating with various institutions occupies the business of the Board in charge of managing home, both on the local and federal levels . It also seems that board members were responsible for the footwork in connecting with local elderly within local hospitals and their own properties. It also lists expenses for heaters and vegetables, among other unlisted expenses. Later in the minutes from the Aug 5 meeting they list deposits from the “community chest.” Once again we see on a more localized level, women are taking lead roles in the physical labor and organization of institutions devoted to the individual needs of vulnerable community members.

Oral histories reveal that residents had varying experiences when confronting race, segregation, and job discrimination, and a variety of other problems within the institutions of the Oakland flatlands. In an oral history conducted by the University of California, Ida Louis Jackson recounts her experiences as a black educator in Oakland. Being an educator in the early twenties gave her a look at the experiences children had in their early education in the flatland schools. Later when she went back to school, she received an advanced degree in teaching at an HBCU, formed connections to the AKA sorority,( a historically black greek organization), and used these personal connections to address the lack of public health resources in black communities across the United States. While in Oakland she spent her time helping out with programs dedicated to dental, and urban health. She stated, “The head of health in the public schools, Dr. Sweet, cooperated with us in the clinics here... I worked at night clinics here, tuberculosis clinics, with the city health physician... We conducted dental health clinics at night for a period of years. They started the project in the school where the poorer people [could have] regular teeth examinations. And through the efforts of Mrs. Logan, we got certain dentists to agree to take whatever children we sent there. So many days a week they would give these children free dental care.

She also recounts that the person responsible for the project was a woman from her own sorority. On an individual level we see a black educated woman utilizing her own personal resources to assist on projects in the Oakland Flatlands. As it seems, there are a large number of clinics, and physical institutions within neighborhoods that addressed the lack of medical services within the neighborhood. This harkens back to the divestment of federal funding from projects dedicated to low income neighborhoods. Ida, seeing these issues, worked for years within clinics to help foster changes within her community.

On the eve of Brown Vs. Board of Education, her perception of the equal rights as having no effects on the development of students or the change in institution funding, and not on the availability of jobs in higher education within the city of Oakland. She relates this in saying, “...you see, on paper we were not supposed to be segregated here. We were supposed to get any job for which we were qualified”. Despite fair employment legislation passing in 1959, it still impeded her ability to access jobs on a higher level. She states, “To put it roughly, the blacks could go to the shows and sit anywhere he wanted...but when it came to equality of opportunity in employment, jobs above the average, the racial factor entered”. While she still continued to teach, and maintained an active membership to the alumni association at CAL where she taught in the 60s, she perceived the changes in ethnic hiring, preferring other ethnicities over African-American teachers, while at the same time she perceived an increased number of multi-ethnic students within Oakland schools. Her experiences in interacting with the Oakland flatlands circled around to the education and health of its inhabitants. On an individual level, she utilized her own resources to assist in projects in local neighborhoods. While negotiating discrimination, she still taught students in Oakland schools.

The historical research available regarding the formation of the Flatlands points out that structural inequalities are at fault for the lack of resources and the overall destitution of the Flatland institutions and housing. What we can see in the available material coming out of Oakland at the time, was that change started on a more localized level. While American historians highlight the most upper echelon of civil rights organizations, it was really the localized collective of individuals that affected the most changes and in flatland neighborhoods.

Historians should look at space, especially in urban spaces, as neighborhoods experience wider historical trends to different degrees based on the neighborhoods they lived in. In addition, neighborhoods dealt with resources that were most needed within their community, and directed funding, and public support for those most vulnerable within their community. Women, importantly, were trailblazers in addressing institutional issues and organizing of resources within communities. Many individual women however focused on the issues presenting that challenged their own abilities to survive within the volatile climate of the landscape. People reacted to changes within their city and neighborhood in differing ways that sometimes had nothing to do with politics or challenging institutions, something which needs to be highlighted more in grassroots civil rights history.

1. “Fannie Wall Children’s Home and Day Nursery, Inc. Charity ball program”. African American Museum & Oakland, Oakland, CA. January 19th, 1948. Calisphere: The University of California.
2. Gretchen Lemke-Santangelo, “ Deindustrialization, Urban Poverty, and African American Community Mobilization in Oakland, 1945 through the 1990s,”  Lawrence B. De Graaf, Kevin Mulroy, and Quintard Taylor, eds. Seeking El Dorado, African Americans in California. University Washington press. Jan. 01, 2001.
3. Gabrielle Morris, “Ida Louise Jackson Overcoming Barriers in Education” Home for Aged and Infirm Colored People of California, The Bancroft Library. University of California, Berkeley. Conducted between 1984 and 1985.
4. Home for Aged and Infirm Colored People of California. “Meeting Minutes of the Home for Aged and Infirm Colored People of California”. Oakland, CA. July 1, 1937. African American Museum and Library at Oakland. Calisphere: The University of California.
5. Jennifer Tilton, “Dangerous or Endangered?: Race and the Politics of Youth in Urban America”, New York University Press, New york, 2010.
6. Johnson, Marilynn,“Urban Arsenals: War Housing and Social Change in Richmond and Oakland, California, 1941-1945.”American Historical Society, Pacific Historical Review. Vol. 60, No. 3 (1991)
7. “Summary Report on the Fannie Wall Children’s Home” African American Museum & Oakland, Oakland, CA 1957. Calisphere: The University of California.