Early settlers in the area were the Ohlone Indians, who undoubtedly traversed the area frequently on their way back and forth from the shellmounds in what became Emeryville, at the mouth of Temescal Creek, to their sweat lodge near what is now 51st and Claremont. Once the whites arrived,
the Indians were made to live near missions and were quickly decimated by smallpox and other diseases. Don Luis Peralta was granted the land by Spain, and his son Vicente built an adobe house
Read more. . .
|
|
Cookie Lavagetto grew up in this house on 46th Street. After playing with the Oakland Oaks, he graduated to the major leagues and made a key hit in
the 1947 World Series, while playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers. In later years he managed the Washington Senators when they became the Minnesota Twins.
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Black Panther Central Headquarters was at 4421 Martin Luther King in 1968. A convoy of Black Panthers left this center on April 6, 1968, with supplies for a barbeque fundraiser
in the park. They ran into the Oakland police at 28th and Union. In the ensuing firefight, 17-year-old Bobby Hutton was slain and Eldridge Cleaver was wounded in the leg.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Toscana Bakery, founded in 1895, provided the many Italian families in the neighborhood with
fresh bread for decades from its bakery on the southeast corner of Market and 40th. In 1984, it merged with three other bakeries to become the San Francisco French Bread Company. Modern
methods resulted in greater throughput, but the bread had a thinner, less flavorful crust. The 40th Street location was
closed by the time Interstate Brands acquired the company in 1993. Interstate Brands went bankrupt in 2005. A fine arts transportation
and storage company now occupies the building.
|
|
|
|
|
|
This storefront at 37th and Martin Luther King was the original site that displayed the collection of the East Bay Negro
Historical Society in 1970. The collection now has its own two-story library building, the African-American Museum and Library, at 659 14th Street.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
This house at 721 West MacArthur Blvd was, in 1915, home to the first African-American policeman in Oakland, Arthur N. Sanderson. Mr. Sanderson was the son of pioneer educator Jeremiah Burke Sanderson, who came to California in 1854
and founded the first school for African-American children in Sacramento in 1855.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Internationally reknowned blues guitarist Brownie McGhee spent the last years of his life in this duplex on 43rd Street.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Key Route street car barn at Martin Luther King Jr. Way and 47th Street, near the banks of Temescal Creek,
was the end of the line for the Grove streetcar line from 1891 until 1948.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Sacred Heart Church was the first church in JAMMI, originally built in 1876. The current church was built in the 1990's; earlier structures
on the site were destroyed by fire in 1897 and earthquake in 1989.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Mrs. Emma Chandler performed "Shampooing, and all kinds of hair work made to order" from 1012 36th Street in 1915, as
advertised in the Colored American Directory.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Dr. Huey P. Newton, founder of the Black Panther Party, lived in this house at 881 47th Street, across from
Temescal Creek, when his family moved here from Monroe, Louisiana in 1945.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
This now-empty lot at 865 43rd Street was once the home of Bobby Gene Moore, who
was questioned there by the FBI on November 27, 1963, concerning the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Moore
was an acquaintance of Jack Ruby, and testified that, in 1952, Ruby frequented a gambling operation
in Dallas in a building where Moore then lived. Author David Schiem has since speculated that this
was an indication of Ruby's involvement with the Dallas mafia.
|
|
|
|
|
