 But yeah, so that's my little spiel about shipping containers, and now we have Vivian who's going to come up and give you a much better talk about the history of Oakland. So Vivian. Alright, so I hate to be a huge jerk, but actually part of the reason Oakland went downhill was because of the shipping containers, because they basically decimated the number of longshoremen that we needed. So, there went all of our jobs. Womp womp. So, tonight I will be telling you guys about a history of Oakland's reputation. Why it is that people go, oh, Oakland. That's nice. So, ways people think of Oakland. There are many. Scary. Dirty. Poor people. Drugs. Gangs. Occupy. Police brutality. Sometimes hipsters. Elefacing the Oakland booty. We've got something going for us. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious. However, it wasn't always this way. For a long time, Oakland was a thriving metropolitan center and actually stood to eclipse San Francisco as sort of the hub of the North Bay, or of Northern California rather. It was easily hub of the North Bay. So, this is the Oakland Museum of California, if you're not familiar with it, is amazing. And this is one of their many pictures from the late 1930s. A bustling downtown cafe. We have, what else? We have 14th and Webster. Look at how pretty it was. We had street cars. They were so nice. And then oil companies were like, oh no, get buses. Lovely postcard. So, World War II was when Oakland really exploded. During World War II, because there was the Pacific Theater going on, California saw an enormous increase of population. Somewhere along the lines of a 25% increase from people coming in to work in shipyards and aircraft manufacturing. That was mostly LA and the Bay Area. Port of Richmond was big, and Port of Oakland was really the huge one. We all know Kaiser now, but in fact where they originally were thriving was in ship manufacturing. They were one of the first companies to offer healthcare to their employees, which is where Kaiser Hospital started. They were really good to their employees. They ran a 24-hour ship manufacturing plant and they could churn out boats at an absurd rate. And so there were tons of people coming in to Oakland to work there. Our industrial jobs were up 166% and in four years our unemployment dropped to 2%, which is ridiculous, especially considering how many more people were moving in. So we had an enormous growth in our population and specifically in our black population. California as a whole saw a 400% increase in the black population in about this four-year window as we were ramping up for World War II. And where previously the Bay Area, we had racially segregated neighborhoods, but it wasn't like a vicious divide. There weren't a lot of tensions, but as all of these migrants were coming in mostly from the south, housing shortages were beginning and everyone was going, oh my God, now I have nowhere to live because of all of these migrants coming in to work in the shipyards and they work 24 hours a day, so they're getting off at like 7 in the morning and getting drunk. What is with that? And we start seeing a huge increase in racial tensions and segregated neighborhoods. However, it was an exciting place. Downtown Oakland was open 24 hours. You could go to a bar pretty much any time, which isn't too far off from the way it still is. You just have to know someone, but it was much more socially accepted at that point. It was a shopping destination. We had big department stores, exciting places to go, restaurants, theater. People would come in to like spend a nice afternoon with a family in Oakland. Aw yeah, Oakland. Things changed. Once again, womp womp. Come on, there we are. We have a lot of now derelict housing. We have beautiful graffiti. And of course, Occupy. We're known for our wonderful citizen police relations. We can blame all of this on the burbs as jerks. Manufacturing fled Oakland after the war, where previously it was really profitable to be right in downtown Oakland because you had this workforce. They're now going, you know what? I don't care how much workforce we have. Come on, 8,000 for an acre versus 180 grand. Where are you going to buy? Seriously. So all of these different companies left Oakland. We had a loss of 33% of our industrial jobs, 10,000 manufacturing jobs, and unemployment was as high as 14%. Well, the national average was only 4%. Oakland was one of the few urban areas. I want to say it was one of I think four that were classified as an officially depressed region by the US government. This was a time of general economic success, and Oakland was not doing very well. Also, white flight. Everyone else was leaving for the suburbs because houses are cheap and cars are cheap. So why live in the city when you can have a house and a yard and 12 cars and 18 kids? And it's just beautiful. You have a frigid air in the kitchen, and if you get frustrated with the baby, you put it in the frigid air. I mean, it's suburban ideals. And so they made these neighborhood covenants because discrimination was not yet illegal. And even if it was, people are really good at finding loopholes to be assholes. So it was a restriction on who could purchase homes in the suburbs, obviously along racial lines. In addition, there's a thing called redlining where banks, including government funding, labeled all neighborhoods in Oakland that were largely minority as high risk. And if you weren't white, you were also considered a high risk borrower. And so anyone who still lived in Oakland could not get a loan for a home. If they already owned a home and it needed improvements, they couldn't get loans for it. Businesses could not get loans. So all of a sudden there was no way to bring money into Oakland, and it was all leaving with the industry to give you a sense of these covenants. San Leandro in 1950 had 20 black people, and in 1960 it had 17. Like, this is just taking tokenism to absurd levels. Whereas West Oakland, the black population in 1940 was 16%, but after white flight and neighborhood covenants, it was up to 62%. So you can see how all of a sudden our racial divides that were already kind of there were becoming incredibly exacerbated. And because they were trapped in areas that they couldn't improve homes, you can't bring in new businesses, everyone is getting compressed. There's less and less and less housing. And so that's where you get people piled into apartments all together. And it's just this increase in misery that leads to both bad things happening and negative perception from outsiders. The jobs were in the suburbs, but workers couldn't move there. And a lot of them didn't have cars or a way to get there. So now there are no jobs, there's no housing, and there's no way to bring anything in. Picard does not approve. And alas, the sun sets in West. West Oakland specifically. So it used to be 7th Street was this really thriving business district. There were a lot of locally owned businesses and because West Oakland has always historically been a largely African-American community, these were of course largely black owned businesses. However, screw all y'all, we want freeways. We're just going to bulldoze right on through your downtown because you know what? Businesses are stupid. I like cars. So they cleared out West Oakland and their timing was really bad. They just kind of left a big empty swath for like almost a decade. Well, they were like, well, we're going to build Bart, but we're thinking about it. We'll get around to it eventually. You know, just enjoy it. Look at all this open space you guys have now. It's great. And in addition, the covenants didn't just keep out homeowners. It kept out businesses too. So anyone whose business was bulldozed, in other words basically all of them, they couldn't relocate their business anywhere else because real estate in Oakland was already at a premium and they couldn't leave to any other suburb. So homes were destroyed and they couldn't move. Businesses were destroyed. So again, we're just pressing everyone into a smaller and smaller space with fewer and fewer options for anything else that they can do. That's that big old hole. Once upon a time, that was a business district. So Bart, West Oakland was bulldozed for two things, Bart and the freeways. And the thing is those weren't made because they were like, let's make Oakland accessible. They were made because they were like, we have all these people in the suburbs with jobs and money and we want to get them to where the stores are. So now you can just go straight into San Francisco. Like why stop in Oakland when you can go to Neiman's if you have all this money? Just go straight to downtown San Francisco. So this completely changed what was going on in Oakland. People aren't coming to the theater in Oakland anymore. They're going to San Francisco. They aren't coming to restaurants in Oakland anymore. They're going to San Francisco. And it's no longer convenient to live in Oakland and commute to San Francisco because it's actually more relaxing to get on Bart out in Lafayette and just drive on into the city instead of living in Oakland and dealing with the Bay Bridge. So everyone's just passing right by Oakland, maybe glancing out the window, probably not. So basically in a really short time, a period of roughly 10 years, we had enormous losses of jobs, huge closings of business, losses of homes. And basically this led to an exponential increase of misery. The residents are trapped. Racism is rampant. Cops in Oakland were actually largely imported from the south. They were generally white cops imported from the south with a history of racial discrimination. And in case you guys haven't noticed, the Oakland cops haven't gotten a better reputation since. And so Oakland was basically boiling over. This led to all of the really cool stuff that started to happen in Oakland in the 60s and 70s with a lot of activism and protests and people coming out and fighting back and realizing we don't have to settle for what's going on. But at this point around the beginning of the 60s, when all of this was coming to a head, Oakland had completely changed. It had gone from this beautiful, thriving, economically strong city to basically a ghetto. And the cat does not approve also. Picard and the cat are on the same page. So right now Oakland is still divided. I think we're all pretty much aware of that. We're working on it. We're getting better. But it's definitely, I see it every day in my classroom, the neighborhood-based biases that my students have towards each other. The way that they make assumptions about who's from where based on race and that there's a lot of identity and a lot of hate around this. So while Oakland as a whole is 45% black, West Oakland remains 77% black. And up until a few years ago when that great grocery co-op near the West Oakland bar came in, so up until just a few years ago, there were 53 liquor stores in West Oakland and not a single grocery store. One of the major issues with the freeways and BART was that Oakland lost a lot of its access to produce and malnutrition and poor health of Oakland children remains an enormous issue. But again, it's going down a little bit. We're still way underemployed. As of, I think it was the 2011 census, we were at minimum of 14.1% unemployment. But again, that's people actively collecting unemployment. I think we've all walked down the streets and seen that there are plenty of people who aren't but definitely are not employed. 40% of Oakland teens will not graduate high school. I teach at Oakland Tech, which has the best graduation rate in the district and we're still at a 20% dropout rate, which is really depressing. There's an 80% within the first five years, small business failure rate in Oakland. Again, our police are in trouble in that we have our fair amount of police brutality of antipathy toward the police that they have to deal with so that when we have the good police who are really working hard and doing their jobs because there are plenty of them out there, they have to deal with this as well. And also, it's just a hard thing to be a cop in Oakland. And by June of this year, we were already up to over 50 homicides. I couldn't find the most recent statistic, but that's halfway through the year and we're already at four homicides a week, basically. That's messed up. Again, the cat is sad. We have made the cat sad. So obviously, things we can do, shop local. What's amazing is how much of a recovery Oakland actively is making right now. We have great local businesses, especially on the food scene, like restaurants, hell yeah. There are so many great community organizations, especially within individual neighborhoods. You have community development corporations. There are tons of opportunities for working with teens, working with homeless. There's so much that we can do to get involved. Again, there are so many activist groups that you can donate money to because frankly, no one else is giving them money, so we have to. Otherwise, they'll never be able to do anything. Be an informed voter and vote in local elections. If no one does, things will just keep going. Pay attention to what's going on. It's really easy to be like, maybe I'm just being white liberal guilt when I look at these police things and I think, that must have been racist. Give yourself the benefit of the doubt and think we need to make sure that what's going on in our community is okay, that we're not just going, maybe I'm over analyzing this and being too politically correct. No, give it a shot. What did I just press? Okay, there we are. All right, and finally, don't lose sight about everything that's great about Oakland. We have so much awesome stuff going on. Like, look how pretty Merritt is. It's so pretty. I mean, it also has a distinctive smell, but if you close your nose, it's beautiful. This was one of my favorite things at Occupy last year. Oh, Loney Land. Outside my school, my students put that up. Our teens in Oakland are fucking awesome. They are so aware of the world and what is going on. Like, they're amazing. They constantly blow me away and they deserve so much better than what we're giving them. And this is up on Telegraph. I unfortunately, you know, I phoned through a chain link fence, not super great, but there's so much amazing street art in Oakland. Again, people here know what's up. So here are some readings that these things come from, my information, and of course, a big thanks to my colleagues from the History Department at Oakland Tech. Thank you, guys. I will take any questions. So West Oakland is pretty old, like, 1880s. What was the neighborhood and the racial population of West Oakland until World War II? West Oakland was largely, there was definitely that sort of where most of the black population was to begin with, but it was also a lot of Irish immigrants who were actually in the police force and the fire department for a long time, like, during around 1900s up through the Depression. The Oakland politics were pretty much run by the rough equivalent of the Irish mob, and they were based out of West Oakland. So a lot of tensions came up as new people came in. Yes? 1906 earthquake affect going back a little farther. All right, so the question was, how did the 1906 earthquake affect West Oakland? And to be honest, I would have to look at my notes. I don't remember. I know that... So let's see. All right, so one of the major things, actually, was that's when Oakland got its step up. I remember now. San Francisco was so screwed over by the earthquake, and Oakland was a bit too, but as you might have noticed, Oakland tends to be a little bit shorter than San Francisco, so they got it really bad, and a lot of things like political stuff, a lot of major newspapers had moved into Oakland after the earthquake happened, and there was a lot of actually concern by the people of San Francisco that Oakland was going to take over and become the center of the Bay Area, and they were like, but it's called the San Francisco Bay, and we are San Francisco. This can't happen. So they fought pretty hard to get things back into San Francisco after they recovered, but that was sort of what started Oakland thriving. Yes? I know that West Oakland is basically very important in regards to the shipping and its proximity to San Francisco, but it's physically a relatively small part of Oakland and I'm wondering why you focused mostly on West Oakland, and also, since you were talking about white light, is that where Piedmont came from? That's partially where Piedmont came from, yes. So West Oakland is the main reason that I focused on it is that it is the major, it was the huge influence with the shipping and the shipyards and all of the changes really most dramatically affected West Oakland. It also, in very similar ways, affected East Oakland, not in that East Oakland wasn't bulldozed to make Bart in the freeways, but East Oakland had the same problems, basically anywhere in the Flatlands. West Oakland is just a really good sort of microcosm of what happened, but all of the Flatlands, it was pretty much the same thing. Yes? That's a really great question. I would suggest finding some organizations where you can mentor teens. There are a lot of them. I know there are things like there's college track. They're based down in Jack London Square, but they serve a number of teens. You can definitely go to your local schools and find out they're always looking for people for after-school programs. We have a ton of things at Tech that are basically volunteer-driven. There's a group called Oakland Kids First. Again, that's all over the city, but they run some fantastic, fantastic programs in the schools. They really help. They get kids doing things after school as opposed to just wandering the streets. They help develop leadership skills, help them take ownership of their schools and their peers, and also, of course, help with things like getting them to graduation and getting them on to college. Last question. Your hand first, yes. You said that Oakland was one of the top destinations in the world, I believe, the top destination in the United States. So I guess it's a two-part question. A, do you believe them? And B, do you think it's had any influence on Oakland's stores? So the question was about the New York Times. Apparently naming Oakland like a top destination in the United States. Number five. Okay. It's interesting. So I haven't read that. And I'm torn because on the one hand I do actually think Oakland is a great place to come to because there is so much fascinating history here. We have amazing museums. There's like this wonderful art scene. If you guys have ever been to Art Murmur, you basically can't move anymore because it's so great. So there are, I think, a lot of good things, but on the other hand, I kind of worry about tourists coming here. Historically, tourists are pretty stupid. And I would worry about what they would do. I feel bad enough when I see them doing that thing where they're like, oh yeah, I'm going to be totally smart and put my backpack on my front so I can protect it. And then like craning around to take a picture with their backpack just like gaping open. And I'm like, I'm just going to drop something in there to see if you notice. So I would worry about tourists, but I don't know. I would say the Bay Area definitely because if you see only Oakland, you're missing out on a lot, but I think Oakland is worth coming to. All right, so thank you guys. Enjoy the rest of the night.