West Oakland: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow is a 3-D web-based virtual walking tour aimed at documenting the cycles of Black displacement and housing insecurity in West Oakland, as well as to preserve the Black voices Oakland is rapidly losing.
Faced with a housing crisis and large waves of Black displacement, this project urgently asks, how exactly did West Oakland become what it is today?
To answer this question, third-generation Oaklander Babette Thomas turns to her father’s stories of growing up housing-insecure in West Oakland during the 60s and 70s. Overlaying multigeneration narratives, this project combines oral history, archival imagery, and forensic mapping to trace the actors involved in West Oakland’s redevelopment. This project argues that these infrastructural decisions not only set West Oakland on a path of vast inequality, but that history is now repeating itself through the processes of rapid gentrification that are once again, displacing Black residents.
What was it like to grow up as a kid navigating West Oakland in the 60’s and 70’s? Where were the spaces you found solace? Do you remember the shapes of the apartments you lived in between houselessness?
This tour seeks to answer these questions as well as a much larger one: Why did my father grow up housing-insecure, during this time? What were the city policies in place that allowed this to happen? And what does this tell us about housing insecurity in West Oakland today?
