Post-War 1940s and 1950s
Soon after the war, the shipbuilding and automobile industries virtually evaporated, as did the jobs that came with it. Many who came to the city did not leave and decided to settle in their new home of Oakland. Meanwhile, many of the city's more affluent residents left the city after the war in order to move into newly developing suburbs to the east of the hills while many blue-collar whites moved to adjacent cities such as San Leandro and Alameda, part of a nationwide phenomenon of white flight.
During this period, the freeway system was constructed and the Key System was dismantled. The largest high rise was constructed on the west side of Lake Merritt, the headquarters building of Kaiser Corporation (the industry, not the HMO). Also in this era, the seedy, rundown area at the foot of Broadway was transformed into Jack London Square.
Nonetheless, by the late 1960s, Oakland, which had been quite prosperous before the war, found itself with a population that was increasingly poor and increasingly African-American.
The poverty and segregation which had developed in Oakland in the postwar years had helped increase the crime rate, which heightened the fears of the conservative, white, middle class-dominated local government. White policemen were recruited from the Deep South, the very place many in Oakland had escaped from. The civil rights movement had yet to make its mark. Consequently, tensions rose quickly between the Oakland police and members of the black community. Inspired by the activism of both the national civil rights movement and the students at the University of California in Berkeley, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale organized the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense.
The city was also home to an innovative funk music scene which produced well-known bands like Sly & the Family Stone, Graham Central Station, Tower of Power, Cold Blood, and The Headhunters. Larry Graham, the bass player for both Sly & the Family Stone and Graham Central Station, is credited with the creation of the extremely influential slap and pop sound still widely used by bassists in many musical idioms today. It was also during the 1960s when the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club's Oakland Chapter, began to grow into a formidable organization. By the 1980s it was the most feared and respected of all Hells Angels chapters. Its Oakland Clubhouse still sits at 4019 Foothill Boulevard in East Oakland. In sports, the Oakland Athletics MLB club won three World Series in a row (1972, 1973, and 1974); the Golden State Warriors won the 1974–1975 NBA championship; and the Oakland Raiders of the NFL won Super Bowl XI in 1977.
Starting in the early 1980s, the number of Latinos, mostly of Mexican origin, began to increase significantly in Oakland, especially in the Fruitvale district and spilling over into East Oakland. This district is one of the oldest in Oakland, growing up around the old Peralta estate (now a city park). It has always had a concentration of Latino residents, businesses and institutions, but increased immigration, which has continued right up to the 21st century has added greater numbers.
In the late 1980s and 1990s, Oakland featured prominently in rap music, both as the hometown for such artists as MC Hammer, Digital Underground, Spice 1, Hieroglyphics, Souls of Mischief, Del tha Funkee Homosapien, The Luniz and Too $hort, and for its featuring in the lyrics of several songs, such as Baby Got Back, California Love and I Got 5 On It. However, the most famous rapper to come from Oakland was the legendary Tupac Shakur. 2pac, who grew up in Baltimore, New York, and later Marin City, moved to Oakland in January 1989 at the age of 17 and lived there longer than in any other city. He began his career as a roadie and dancer for Digital Underground. Tupac mentions Oakland in several of his songs and what it was like living there. Outside of the rap scene, Grammy award winning artists Green Day, En Vogue and Tony! Toni! Tone! (headed by Raphael Saadiq) also emerged from Oakland.
The Loma Prieta earthquake occurred on October 17, 1989, in the greater San Francisco Bay Area, measuring 7.1 on the Richter magnitude scale. Several structures in Oakland were badly damaged. The double-decker portion of the Cypress Viaduct freeway (Interstate 880) structure, located in Oakland, collapsed, killing 42. The eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge also sustained significant damage and was closed to traffic for one month. Throughout the 1990s, buildings throughout Oakland were retrofitted to better withstand earthquakes.
On October 20, 1991, a massive fire (see 1991 Oakland firestorm) swept down from the Berkeley Hills above the Caldecott Tunnel. 25 were killed and 150 injured and over 2,000 homes were destroyed. The economic loss has been estimated at $1.5 billion. Many homes were rebuilt much larger than they originally were.
In late 1996, Oakland was the center of a controversy surrounding Ebonics (African American Vernacular English), an ethnolect the outgoing Oakland Unified School District board voted to recognize on December 18.
Jerry Brown, who was elected mayor of Oakland in 1998, initiated a plan to bring an additional 10,000 residents to downtown Oakland. The plan has resulted in several redevelopment projects near Lake Merritt, Jack London Square, and other neighborhoods just outside of downtown. These redevelopment projects have been controversial as many residents see these projects as gentrification, resulting in the loss of lower-income and minority residents in downtown Oakland. Additionally, the weakening of the Bay Area economy in 2000 and 2001 resulted in low occupancy of the new housing and slower growth and economic recovery than expected. In recent years demand for high-rise condos and towers has surged, as in San Francisco; there are currently many proposals for high-rise buildings, including a 63 floor, 827 ft. (252 m) tower that will rival the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco. The developer says that the height could be pushed up to beat out the Transamerica Pyramid, possibly giving Oakland a considerable skyline as well.
Additionally, the Oakland Athletics have long been searching for a site to build a new baseball stadium. A site the A's found desirable was found near Telegraph Avenue and 20th Street in downtown Oakland, but was instead slated for a housing development. The site was favored by the Athletics for a new stadium as it was accessible by public transit and nearby freeways. Finally in 2006, the A's announced a deal to build a new stadium in Fremont, California, to be called Cisco Field.
In February 2006, the Oakland Ballet closed due to financial problems and the closure of their performance facility, the Calvin Simmons Theater at the Kaiser Convention Center. The Oakland Ballet had been performing in Oakland since 1965. In 2007, however, founder Ronn Guidi announced the revival of the Oakland Ballet. A performance of The Nutcracker is scheduled for December, 2007, including members of the Oakland Ballet Academy, which Guidi presides over. A new use for the Kaiser Convention Center was proposed in 2006: a redevelopment designed to nucleate a cultural and educational district with the nearby Oakland Museum of California and Laney College. In July 2006, the Oakland City Council approved a bond measure to expand the city's library system and convert the closed Center into a replacement for the city's aging main library, but Oakland voters defeated the library bond measure in the November 2006 election.
Ron Dellums, a former Berkeley city council member and U.S. Representative, was elected mayor in June 2006. The mayoral election race was contentious between Dellums and other candidates, including Oakland city council president Ignacio de la Fuente and councilmember Nancy Nadel. Each candidate had different visions of Oakland's future and different ideas about how to combat crime, encourage appropriate urban development, and foster successful public schools. In what was essentially a three-way race, Dellums barely won the required majority of votes needed to win without a runoff election in November.
(Source: Wikipedia.org)
