Brief History

A lot of citizen drama in 1940 preceded the building of Oakland, California's or West Oakland's Campbell Village Court, a two city block area between Campbell Street on the East, Willow street on the West, Eighth Street on the South, and Ninth street on the North. A number of Oakland residents did not want the area's sixty-seven houses, including a church demolished to be replaced by 18 buildings, containing 154 apartments. Some could not understand why they wanted to rebuild in what was considered the best part of Oakland. The site was one mile from the Oakland waterfront, there was easy access to grocery stores, schools, parks, movie theaters, night clubs, a train station and other amenities. And, it was only eight minutes from San Francisco, via the then recently constructed San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. In an attempt to get Oakland Housing Authority officials to change their minds about the site for the so-called Rehousing Plan, reports in the Oakland Tribune indicated that there was a "wild riot" at an Oakland City Council meeting and a petition signed by 1,500 city residents. West Oakland religious leaders maintained that "good and substantial houses" were being destroyed and replaced by "monstrosities resembling a cross between a cow-barn, barracks, and a jail cell block." Spokespersons for the property owners said, ". . .the [Housing] Authority intends to discriminate against the Negro race with a 'Jim Crow' project." The Housing Authority's architect, of course had a different view. He said that the building's construction will be so oriented that the windows faced as nearly as possible the east and west sun. And, that the exterior of the buildings was "in the modern trend with simplicity the key note." In the final analysis, in June 1940, the Housing Authority prevailed in their condemnation of the properties, with one of the last holdouts being the Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church, at 885 Campbell Street. And, by about September 1941, families began moving into their new apartments.

Blog Purpose

The purpose of this blog is to document life in Campbell Village Court, Oakland, California in the 1940s and1960s by collecting stories from those who grew up there and from their friends and relatives. So why should anyone in the World be interested in stories from that place, at that time? It was a special time for the children, teenagers, and young adults living there. The World should be interested because "Every life has a story and every story has a lesson," says Oprah Winfrey. Look at ours, and ask yourself, "What's mine?"