37.9074° N, 121.0764° W
OAKLAND
Most Famous People Born in Oakland, United States
- Notable people
- 1,016
- Peak decade
- 1940s
- Median birth year
- 1949
- Most distinctive
- Rapper 23.4×
The Rapper bench here runs at better than twenty-three times the global baseline — Too $hort, MC Hammer, and the entire Bay Area hyphy lineage compressed into one line of the panel, a regional rap dialect invented the way New Orleans invented jazz. The deep Baseball count is the other Oakland story, the A's dynasty years and the West Oakland sandlots that produced Rickey Henderson, while the outsized Artist bench still runs on Black Panther-era visual culture.
One face per decade — the most globally famous figure born in Oakland during each.
Notable Births by Decade
Click a decade to filter the list below. Peak: 1940s with 138 notable births.
What Oakland Is Known For
Click any row to filter the list of people below.
Football is Oakland's biggest profession — 12% of all notables (118).
Oakland over-indexes on rapper — 23.4× the global rate.
Oakland under-produces politician — only 0.4× the global rate.
Profession Mix Over Time
Each band shows a profession family's share of Oakland's notable births by decade. Hover the chart for the breakdown at any decade.
- Sports
- Music
- Film & TV
- Politics & Law
- Writing
- Art & Design
- Other
- Filtered to 1880s Clear ×
Willis H. O'Brien
1886 - 1962
Robert Woolsey
1888 - 1938
Ethel Grey Terry
1882 - 1931
True Boardman
1882 - 1918
Irving Morrow
1884 - 1952
Edward Winslow Gifford
1887 - 1959
Aaron Sapiro
1884 - 1959
Walter DeLeon
1884 - 1947
Art Hickman
1886 - 1930
Mike Pingitore
1888 - 1952
Clyde Doyle
1887 - 1963
Jefferson Moffitt
1887 - 1954
Eduard Miloslavić
1884 - 1952
Harry Mainhall
1886 - 1931
John Sheehan (actor)
1885 - 1952
Andrew Bennison
1886 - 1942
Dagmar Dahlgren
1880 - 1951
Carl Zamloch
1889 - 1963
Louis Bennison
1884 - 1929
Waldemar Theodore Schaller
1882 - 1967
Weldon B. Cooke
1884 - 1914
Rafael Storm
1889 - 1951
Jerry Dorsey (outfielder)
1885 - 1924
Emory Buckner
1888 - 1941
Inez Crittenden
1887 - 1918
W. W. Conner
1882 - 1938