About
Mission
The mission of the Oak Center Neighborhood Association (OCNA) is to work together to celebrate what we love about our neighborhood through a commitment to solving community problems, maintaining a residential community, organizing outreach events, and creating a safe, healthy, and beautiful place with opportunities for everyone: children and adults, residents and business owners, renters and homeowners.
History
Origins
The Oak Center Neighborhood Association’s first official meeting gathered more than 300 people in the McClymonds High School Auditorium on July 1st, 1963. The topic of the meeting was the proposed redevelopment of Oak Center, the second neighborhood of five in West Oakland to be targeted by local authorities for demolition and new development.
The group described the following as its primary purpose:
To work together to try to keep this neighborhood intact and to get as many properties rehabilitated as is possible.
Over the course of the meeting, chaired by Lillian Love of 1223 Adeline St, neighbors gathered more than 40 questions for Nat Frankel, Chairman of the Board of the Redevelopment Agency for Oakland:
Can our house be repaired so that I can keep my property?
Will my home be demolished and how much will I be paid?
I want to keep my property and bring it up to standard. Would I be able to accomplish this aim?
Do we have to improve our home in six months or move?
Will I be appraised as to when and where I can to to find out about finances?
How many bad houses in a block will determine a blighted block?
If you do not feel able to go into several thousand $ debt to improve, what will happen then?
Complete demolition of 50 blocks of the adjacent Acorn neighborhood had already begun.
The official OCNA meeting was precipitated by a number of informal block meetings, including one on April 29th in the home of Missouri Riley at 1311 Magnolia Street. Neighbors May Williams, Virginia Harvey, Marguerite Jones, and Mr. and Mrs. Dick Weathers were in attendance, as well as Rose E. Sherman, social planning consultant with the City of Oakland.
Over the course of the next two years, the OCNA forged alliances inside City Hall while placing consistent pressure on those opposed to preserving Oak Center, such as Redevelopment Agency executive director Thomas Bell and Mayor John C. Houlihan. The pressure made a difference. By February 1965, Bell had resigned and OCNA received a public commitment from the city that nearly three-fourths of Oak Center would be rehabilitated rather than razed.
Recognition as a Historic District
Nearly 40 years later, the OCNA scored a second major victory in its campaign to have the neighborhood recognized as Oakland’s largest Historic Preservation District.
Of the approximately 500 residences in Oak Center, about 350 were built before 1925. Of those, 125 were built before 1890. A number of homes have been designated as city landmarks, and well-preserved examples of nearly every Victorian style remain: Italianate, Stick, Queen Anne, and others.
This effort was the result of years of organizing and hard work by the OCNA, in partnership with the Oakland Heritage Alliance and city officials, and due especially to the leadership of neighborhood resident and OCNA board member Ellen Wyrick-Parkinson.
Resources
Our best resources are our community members! Join us at a meeting if you are researching Oak Center history.
The Oakland History Room at the Main Branch of the Oakland Public Library is an excellent resource. It is the source for many of the photos on this website. Other documents of interest include:
Rhomberg, Chris. 2004. No There There : Race, Class, and Political Community in Oakland.
Sherman, Rose Edith Hightower. 1964. Oak Center Neighborhood; "To Provide an Opportunity for Residents to Participate in the Shaping of Their Community": A Diary on How This Was Done in Oak Center / by Rose Edith Hightower Sherman [with the Sunset District Community Council.
Tinnemann, Ethel Mary. An Historic District in Oakland [Oak Center].
Oakland Heritage Alliance News. 1981.
Architectural Forum, v. 126, no. 3, April. 1967. "Oakland Presents its Case for Salvaging a Ghetto"
Chapter 5 of Penelope Fergison's undergraduate thesis, Head for the Hills: Race and Property Value in Oakland, discusses the founding of the OCNA, including interviews with neighborhood residents.
A number of online publications have written recently about the history of Oak Center:
An oral history with OCNA's first vice president, Constantine Lekas, is available on the Internet Archive.
Head for the Hills- Race and Property Value in Oakland.pdfOrganization
Officers
Chairperson -- Mr. M. Taffet
Vice-Chairperson -- Mr. R. Wilk
Recording Secretary -- Mr. I. Mathews
Corresponding Secretary -- Open
Committees
Neighborhood Crime & Safety -- Open
Neighborhood Business -- Ms. J. Wang
Outreach / Fundraising -- Open
Supermarket -- Mr. R. Wilk
Youth Issues -- Mr. T. Holiday
Land Use Committee -- Mr. R. Wilk and Mr. J. Taylor
Parks and Recreation -- Ms. V. Winn
Charter & Bylaws
OCNA_BYLAWS_2016.pdf