From “Social Structure and Economic Crisis: the 1930s” from No There There by Chris Romberg
Oakland’s Demographic Change
“As Oakland’s economy faltered, so did its population growth.
City size increased by only 18,100 or 6 percent between 1930 and
1940, a fall-off from the 31 and 44 percent growth rates of the
previous two decades. This slowdown, however, concealed
significant dislocations within the population. The Depression
stimulated historic national patterns of westward migration,
particularly to California. In 1940, approximately 877,000
California residents had moved there from out of state in the
previous five years, and almost 800,000 more moved from one
county or large city to another within the state. In Oakland, 17
percent of the population were such recent migrants, higher than
the national average of 12 percent…
…Depression-era migrants to Oakland tended to be from
within California and were predominantly urban: 82 percent of all
new arrivals in Oakland were from urban areas, and 36 percent
were from cities with populations over a hundred thousand,
including 11 percent from San Francisco…”
…The effects of economic contraction in Oakland are perhaps
best indicated by the city’s apparent inability to keep population.
Between 1935 and 1940, almost as many people moved out of
Oakland as came into the city…
From “Social Structure and Economic Crisis: the 1930s” from No There There by Chris Romberg
The Business Regime: Politics and Urban Development
“…The downtown elites had come to power hoping to promote
local growth, but the Depression had brought that practically to a
standstill. With the collapse of private capital investment, the
regime’s solution was to turn to the state and federal governments,
including the military to stimulate new urban development. This
policy may be observed in the major public-works projects carried
out during the decade…
- the Broadway Low Level Tunnel, 1934-1937 (now the
Caldecott Tunnel)
- the San Francisco- Oakland Bay Bridge, 1933-1936
- the Alameda Naval Air Station
- the Oakland Naval Supply Depot
[The Oakland] Tribune publisher J.R. Knowland was intimately
involved in the entire project…
Under Knowland’s leadership, the downtown elite
consolidated a form of urban governance in the new regime. The
elite’s ambitious developmental agenda required strong internal
business-class unity and public administrative autonomy to protect
its political negotiations with state and federal authorities for major
infrastructure projects…while virtually excluding from the political
community the broad population of working-class, minority, and
low-income Oakland residents.”
From “Social Structure and Economic Crisis: the 1930s” from No There There by Chris Romberg
The White Middle Class
[According to a 1930s study by the Institute of Child Welfare at
the University of California], 55 percent of the middle class families
experience economic “deprivation”, that is to say, between 1929 and
1934 they lost at least 35 percent of their income…
Economic deprivation took its toll on these families…For the
deprived middle classes, the experience and status loss itself may
have been most traumatic, after the prosperity and upward mobility
of the 20s…Some families went to extraordinary lengths to maintain
appearances with their neighbors and to avoid the social and
psychological costs of “coming down in the world.”
[According to a small sample of white families in North
Oakland],…a significant proportion (45 percent) of the middle class
families were not deprived even during the depths of the
Depression, particularly the professionals…Second, among those
that were deprived, the old middle-class entrepreneurs threw
themselves into saving family businesses, while the white-collar
group either strained their resources to keep from losing face or
withdrew from social contacts altogether.”
From “Social Structure and Economic Crisis: the 1930s” from No There There by Chris Romberg
Chinese Exclusion
“In July 1933, members of the Glenview Improvement Club in
the lower East Oakland hills mobilized immediately on hearing of
the proposed sale of a house on Park Boulevard to an “oriental”
buyer. As reported in the club’s monthly Glenview News, the group
met and unanimously affirmed its position as “unalterably opposed
to the intermingling of oriental people and white people”; had a
copy of the resolution drawn up by its attorney and sent to the
owner, the real estate agent, and the Oakland Real Estate Board, and
directed the club president to “take such action as will prevent the
sale or occupancy of said premises by people of the oriental race.”
From “Social Structure and Economic Crisis: the 1930s” from No There There by Chris Romberg
African Americans before the Great Depression
“[West Oakland] became the center of an expanding black
community. Between 1920 and 1930, the city’s African American
population more than doubled in size from 3,055 to 7,503 people,
becoming the largest non-white group in the city…the small but
growing black population supported a flowering of indigenous
institutions and community formation in the 10s and 20s…
Among these institutions were various black-owned
businesses, churches, and private social-welfare organizations. In
addition, several black newspapers were published in Oakland,
including the Western Outlook, Western American and California
Voice, while journalist Delilah Beasley’s column “Activities among
the Negroes” appeared weekly in the Oakland Tribune from 1923
until her death in 1934…
Historian Joseph Rodriguez writes, ‘[Oakland] black elites often
times formed committees which discussed problems of
discrimination with white officials. Confrontation rarely, if ever,
took place. Instead, prominent black elites used their personal
influence and friendships with city officials to change public policy.’
From “Social Structure and Economic Crisis: the 1930s” from No There There by Chris Romberg
African Americans during the Great Depression
As the Depression took hold, even these groups had difficulty
maintaining their resources. Of the several black newspapers…only
the California Voice survived…Unemployment hit the black
community especially hard: Between 1930 and 1940, the total
number of regularly employed black male and female workers
declined by 40 percent, from 3,864 to 2,274, even as the total black
population grew by nearly a thousand during the same period.
Blacks gained only limited access to the jobs provided on the major
infrastructure projects and instead were heavily concentrated in
relief work…
An exception to this pattern was the Brotherhood of Sleeping
Car Porters (BSCP) union. Founded nationally by A. Philip Randolph
in 1925, the Oakland local was organized in 1926 by Morris “Dad”
Moore and C.L. Dellums…
From “Social Structure and Economic Crisis: the 1930s” from No There There by Chris Romberg
White Working Classes
“…69 percent of the working class families…suffered
deprivation, with even higher rates (80 percent) among those with
foreign born parents. Such families were concentrated in the
industrial flatland districts that stretched across the city’s entire
lowland perimeter. This area began along the city’s northern
borders with Berkeley and the town of Emeryville, with its
foundries, canneries, and popular bars, restaurants, and gambling
joints surrounding the minor-league baseball stadium of the Pacific
Coast League Oakland Oaks. Within walking distance was the North
Oakland Italian American neighborhood of Temescal…Industrial
development continued along the waterfront periphery around the
estuary toward East Oakland, to the cotton mills and canneries at
the foot of Twenty-third Avenue and the adjacent PortugueseAmerican community called Jingletown, down the rail lines to the
factories and warehouses below the long commercial strip of East
14th Street, up to the Chevrolet plant and workers’ houses in
Eastmont…
Many European ethnics also labored as stevedores and freight
handlers along the docks and warehouses on the city waterfront.
Local activity in shipping, storage, and distribution had grown
rapidly with the rise of California agribusinesses, the emergence of
highway transport, and the reorganization of the port of Oakland…
From “Social Structure and Economic Crisis: the 1930s” from No There There by Chris Romberg
Working Class Unions and the Labor Movement
The destruction of the waterfront unions after World War I left
these employers with practically unilateral control in the labor
market, and in the depths of the Depression, conditions for workers
steadily grew worse. By the winter of 1933, shipowners had
reduced longshore wages to 75 cents an hour, while warehouse
workers at the Santa Cruz Packing Company earned a rate of 35 to
45 cents an hour for up to a 17-hour day during the busy season…
Worker unrest on the docks finally broke out in May 1934, in
an 82-day coastwide strike led by Pacific Coast District 38 [a union]
of the International Longshoremen’s Association. Oakland
teamsters and dockworkers participated in the strike,,,in July the
waterfront strike escalated into a citywide General Strike in San
Francisco, after two workers were shot and killed by police…more
than 70 East Bay unions called out their members in sympathy,
including Key System employees, who shut down streetcar and
transbay ferry service…As a result of the Strike…longshore workers
were eventually awarded a wage increase, reduced hours, and a
jointly operated employer-union hiring hall…
This landmark victory electrified the Bay Area labor
movement…As a result of these events, the longshore and
warehouse workers’ union soon became a leading force in the
movement of the Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO) on the
West Coast. With the participation and support of Communist Party
activists, CIO unions in the East Bay moved into the auto,
warehouse, maritime, cannery, and public-utility sectors, organizing
thousands of unskilled industrial and ethnic minority workers. By
the spring of 1937, workers were mobilizing strikes throughout the
city…
From “Social Structure and Economic Crisis: the 1930s” from No There There by Chris Romberg
Working Class Identity and Solidarity
Immigrant ethnic and industrial workers eagerly joined the
new unions, asserting a class identity and solidarity that extended
beyond the workplace and into the community, including crossracial
support for New Deal reforms to meet urban needs…
…C.L. Dellums, [who led a coalition of the CIO Labor’s NonPartisan League and the Oakland League of Women Voters] later
recalled the mobilization in support of public housing:
So I started to lead demonstrations in city council meetings
through Labor’s Non-Partisan League, because my strength
was in the labor movement and it was where I could get a
crowd. City Hall then was looked upon as the jail house,
because the jail was on the 13th floor of City Hall and Negroes
didn’t like to go where the jail is, apparently; it is hard to get
them down there. But I knew that in the labor movement I
could get an audience so I raised the issue in Labor’s NonPartisan League and that is how we started to go in before the
city council to demand that they consider an enabling
resolution for low-cost housing and go on record for it.
Their efforts succeeded in getting $5 million in federal funds
authorized to build low-income housing projects in Oakland.
From “Social Structure and Economic Crisis: the 1930s” from No There There by Chris Romberg
California History
Name _________________________
Date _________________ Per____
Directions: Answer the questions for each “station”. Use your responses to annotate a map of
Oakland during the Great Depression (1929-1945).
Oakland’s Demographic Change
1. Did Oakland’s population increase or decrease during the 1930s?
2. Where did most people who migrated to Oakland come from?
3. What was the important demographic change between 1935 to 1940?
The Business Regime: Politics and Urban Development
1. Where was the business regime located?
2. Who did the business elites turn to in order to promote urban development?
3. What major public works projects were started by the business regime?
4. Who did the business elites exclude in their business negotiations?
White Middle Class
1. What was economic deprivation?
2. How were the white middle class affected by the Great Depression?
3. In what neighborhood did white middle class families live?
4. How did white middle class families treat their income loss in front of their neighbors?
Chinese Exclusion
1. What did the Glenview Improvement Club exclude a Chinese person from doing?
African Americans before the Great Depression
1. In what neighborhood did African Americans settle?
2. What institutions flourished before the Depression?
3. How did African Americans change public policy in Oakland before the Depression?
From “Social Structure and Economic Crisis: the 1930s” from No There There by Chris Romberg
African Americans during the Great Depression
1. How did the Depression affect African American workers?
2. What kind of work did most African Americans find during the Depression?
3. What was the main exception to question #2?
White Working Classes
1. How were white ethnic working classes affected by the Depression?
2. Where did white ethnic working classes live?
3. What ethnic groups made up this working class?
4. What kinds of jobs did the white working class have?
Working Class Unions and the Labor Movement
1. What kind of working conditions did the working class work in?
2. What action did the working class take to fight their working conditions?
3. What did they gain from this action?
4. What did the workers organize themselves into?
Working Class Identity and Solidarity
1. As a part of a union and labor movement, immigrants and workers created an identity
based on what?
2. What did this new coalition fight for?
3. What did they win?