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Oakland History
  • The area that includes Oakland was part of a Spanish land grant  to Don Antonio Maria Peralta in 1820.

  •  During the gold rush, Edson Adams, Horace Carpentier and Andrew Moon, claimed parcels adjacent to Broadway. They consolidated their claims, surveyed the land, laid out and incorporated the Town of Oakland, and sold subdivisions before Peralta took legal action to challenge the claims. Peralta’s challenge was upheld in the US Supreme Court, but impoverished by attorney’s fees, he sold most of his land at a low price.

  • World War II began an economic boom.  Shipbuilidng and canning were Oakland's biggest wartime industries. Workers came from around the nation.

  • Between 1950 and 1960, about 100,000 white property owners moved out of Oakland—part of a nationwide phenomenon called White Flight.

  • Beginning in the Mid 1950’s, many West Oakland families were displaced by the construction of the Nimitz Freeway and the "urban renewal" of West Oakland, the majority were Black and Latino. Oakland's first Latino community in West Oakland was completely destroyed forcing many Latinos to relocate to the Fruitvaledistrict and East Oakland. African Americans relocated to East Oakland as well, especially the Elmhurst district and surrounding areas.
     

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