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List of people from Oakland, California

This is a list of people from Oakland, California, people born in Oakland or who lived in Oakland for a significant time.

Academics

Gail Mahood – geology (born in Oakland)

Artists and designers

Athletes

Businesspeople, entrepreneurs and industrialists

Stephen Bechtel – engineer, president, CEO of Bechtel Corporation, 1933-1960
Anthony Chabot – entrepreneur, father of hydraulic mining, namesake of Chabot Space & Science Center, Lake Chabot, and Chabot College, buried in Oakland
Charles Crocker – railroad tycoon, buried in Oakland
Debbi Fields – entrepreneur, founder of Mrs. Fields cookies
Domingo Ghirardelli – founder of the Ghirardelli Chocolate Company based in San Francisco, buried in Oakland
Ken Hofmann – former owner of the Oakland Athletics
Henry J. Kaiser – entrepreneur, businessman, founder of Kaiser Permanente and Kaiser Family Foundation, buried in Oakland
Mark Mastrov – founder of 24 Hour Fitness, partial owner of the Sacramento Kings
Jonah Peretti – founder of BuzzFeed
Francis Marion Smith (also known as "Borax" Smith) – miner, business magnate

Chefs

Tanya Holland – chef, restaurateur, podcast host, and cookbook author.
Nelson German – chef
Nite Yun - chef and restaurateur.

Entertainment

Leaders (activists and politicians)

Richard Aoki – activist
William P. Baker – politician
Sonny Barger – founder of the Hells Angels motorcycle club
Henry G. Blasdel – first governor of Nevada; resident of Oakland
Jerry Brown – politician, former governor of California and mayor of Oakland
Albert E. Carter – politician
Frank Chu – eccentric street protester
C. L. Dellums – organizer and leader of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters
Ron Dellums – politician, former U.S. Congressman and Representative, mayor of Oakland
Frank M. Dixon, politician, former governor of Alabama
Warren B. English – Confederate war veteran, politician, realtor
Lydia Flood Jackson, businesswoman, club woman, suffragist, an oldest living native of Oakland when she died in 1963
Marcus Foster – educator, the first African-American Superintendent of the Oakland Unified School District
Alicia Garza – co-founder of Black Lives Matter
Elihu Harris – politician, former mayor of Oakland
JuJu Harris – food-affordability activist
Kamala Harris – politician, U.S. Senator, first female African-American attorney general of California; first female, African-American, and Asian-American Vice President of the United States
Van Jones – founder, Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and Special Advisor for Green Jobs under US President Barack Obama
Fred Korematsu – Japanese-American who fought forced internment, testing the law in Korematsu v. United States
Joseph R. Knowland – former U.S. Representative and former owner of the Oakland Tribune, cremated in Oakland
William F. Knowland – former U.S. Senator
Barbara Lee – U.S. Representative
Charles Goodall Lee – dentist, civic leader, benefactor of the Chinese American Citizens Alliance
Clara Elizabeth Chan Lee – activist, first Chinese-American woman voter in the U.S.
Richard Lee – horticulturist, activist for the legalization of marijuana
Edwin Meese III – former U.S. Attorney General
Victor H. Metcalf – politician, attorney, banker
Jessica Mitford – writer, activist, former Communist
Paul Montauk – Communist politician and two-time candidate for Oakland mayor
Ethel Moore – civic, education, and national defense work leader
Anca Mosoiu – technology activist
Nancy Nadel – member of the Oakland City Council
Huey P. Newton – activist, co-founder of the Black Panther Party
Andrew Nisbet Jr. – member of the Washington House of Representatives and United States Army officer
Pat Parker – black lesbian poet and activist
Ed Rosenthal – horticulturist, publisher, activist for the legalization of marijuana
Byron Rumford – pharmacist
John A. Russo – Oakland city attorney, former city councilman
Bobby Seale – activist, co-founder of the Black Panther Party
Hettie B. Tilghman – African-American activist and suffragist
Robert Treuhaft – activist for labor and leftist causes, attorney, writer
Charles Stetson Wheeler – attorney, Regent of the University of California
Earl Warren – Assistant Attorney City of Oakland, District Attorney of Alameda County, Attorney General of California, Governor of California and U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice
Lionel J. Wilson – politician, first African-American mayor of Oakland
Mother Wright – anti-hunger activist

Military

Bud Anderson – USAF (served 1942-1972) fighter pilot and commander, triple ace who retired at the rank of colonel
Jeremiah C. Sullivan – Civil War general in the Union Army and staff member of Ulysses S. Grant, buried in Oakland

Musicians, composers and dancers

Physicians

Samuel Merritt – physician, practiced in San Francisco, namesake of Merritt College, Merritt Hospital, and Lake Merritt, buried in Oakland
Virginia Prentiss - nanny to Jack London, midwife and former slave

Religious leaders

David A. Bednar – LDS Apostle, born in Oakland
David Berg – controversial cult leader, founder of Children of God
Yusuf Bey – controversial Black Muslim activist
Mose Durst – author, educator, former president of the Unification Church
James Ishmael Ford – Zen Buddhist priest and Unitarian Universalist minister
Ray Frank – female Jewish leader
Jack Hayford – minister, chancellor, songwriter
Judah Leon Magnes – prominent Reform rabbi, first President of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Carol Anne O'Marie – Roman Catholic nun, mystery fiction writer
Bebe Patten – evangelist and founder of Patten University
Clarence Richard Silva – Catholic bishop from Oakland, current bishop of Honolulu
Richard B. Stamps – anthropologist, archeologist, president of the Taipei Mission of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints
Allen Henry Vigneron – Catholic bishop, leader of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Oakland

Scientists and inventors

Dean Burk – medical researcher
Fernando J. Corbató – computer scientist
Frederick Cottrell – inventor
Frank Epperson – popsicle inventor
Lloyd N. Ferguson – first African American to earn a Ph.D. in chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley
Heinz Fraenkel-Conrat, biochemist and virologist; died in Oakland
Ansel Franklin Hall – first park naturalist for Yosemite National Park, first Chief Forester for the National Park Service
Richard F. Johnston – ornithologist, academic and author
Stanley Miller – chemist
Wendell Phillips – archaeologist and oil magnate
Lydia Weld, first woman to get a degree in engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and naval architect in World War II
William Shurtleff, researcher, technical writer, bibliographer, historian, and popularizer of soyfoods

Writers and poets

Daniel Alarcón – writer, currently resides in Oakland
Catherine Asaro – writer
Chauncey Bailey – journalist assassinated by an agent of Your Black Muslim Bakery
Delilah L. Beasley – first African-American columnist to be published in a major newspaper
Anthony Boucher – writer
Garrett Caples – poet, writer
Jon Carroll – columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle
Frank Chin – writer
Daniel Clowes – comic book writer, Academy Award-nominated screenwriter, currently resides in Oakland
Robert Duncan – poet
Sarah Webster Fabio – African-American writer, poet, educator; born in Nashville, lived in Oakland 1955-1979
Maxine Hong Kingston – writer, currently resides in Oakland
Richard Lange – Los Angeles-based author, born in Oakland
Yiyun Li – writer, former creative writing instructor at Mills College
Jack London – writer, raised in Oakland, namesake of Jack London Square
Anthony Marra – writer
Rod McKuen – poet, composer, singer
Joaquin Miller – poet, lived in Oakland from 1886–1913
Jessica Mitford – author
Leila Mottley – author and poet
Jess Mowry – writer
Colleen Patrick-Goudreau – author, speaker, and podcaster
Ishmael Reed – writer, currently resides in Oakland
Mary Roach – science writer, currently resides in Oakland
William Saroyan – dramatist, author, lived in Oakland from 1913-1918
Jason Shiga – author, cartoonist, puzzle designer
Emji Spero – writer, poet, performance artist
Alex Steffen – writer, born in Oakland
Gertrude Stein – writer
Robert Louis Stevenson – writer
Tina Susman – journalist, Time senior editor, former national editor of BuzzFeed News
Amy Tan – writer, born in Oakland
Ben Fong-Torres – rock journalist
Jack Vance – science fiction writer
Nellie Wong – poet and activist, born in Oakland
Shawn Wong – writer, English professor
Helen Zia – writer, journalist, and activist, currently resides in Oakland

Criminals

Felix Mitchell – notorious drug lord and gang leader of the 1970s and early 1980s
Hans Reiser – computer programmer, owner of Namesys, convicted of murdering his wife
Tommy Lynn Sells – murderer and suspected serial killer