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.

Through the Decades

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 rapper23.4× the global rate.

Oakland under-produces politician — only 0.4× the global rate.

  1. Football118
  2. Baseball102
  3. Actor85
  4. Basket52
  5. Politician50
  6. Music47
  7. Singer35
  8. Artist35
  1. Rapper2623.4×
  2. Baseball1028.8×
  3. Basket524.1×
  4. Artist353.4×
  5. Music473.2×
  6. Novelist112.7×
  7. Film241.9×
  8. Lawyer321.8×
  1. Politician500.4×
  2. Writer230.7×

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.

18001825185018751900192519501975
  • Sports
  • Music
  • Film & TV
  • Politics & Law
  • Writing
  • Art & Design
  • Other
All1,016
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Showing 26 of 1,016 notable people

0043 ANIMATOR

Willis H. O'Brien

1886 - 1962

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0111 ACTOR

Robert Woolsey

1888 - 1938

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0123 ACTOR

Ethel Grey Terry

1882 - 1931

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0195 ACTOR

True Boardman

1882 - 1918

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0269 ARCHITECT

Irving Morrow

1884 - 1952

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0279 ANTHROPOLOGIST

Edward Winslow Gifford

1887 - 1959

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0284 LAWYER

Aaron Sapiro

1884 - 1959

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0314 SCREENWRITER

Walter DeLeon

1884 - 1947

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0316 BANDLEADER

Art Hickman

1886 - 1930

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0376 BANJOIST

Mike Pingitore

1888 - 1952

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0413 LAWYER

Clyde Doyle

1887 - 1963

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0444 SCREENWRITER

Jefferson Moffitt

1887 - 1954

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0447 PATHOLOGIST

Eduard Miloslavić

1884 - 1952

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0523 ACTOR

Harry Mainhall

1886 - 1931

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0528 ACTOR

John Sheehan (actor)

1885 - 1952

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0590 SCREENWRITER

Andrew Bennison

1886 - 1942

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0610 ACTOR

Dagmar Dahlgren

1880 - 1951

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0646 BASEBALL

Carl Zamloch

1889 - 1963

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0678 ACTOR

Louis Bennison

1884 - 1929

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0695 MINERALOGIST

Waldemar Theodore Schaller

1882 - 1967

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0737 AVIATOR

Weldon B. Cooke

1884 - 1914

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0781 ACTOR

Rafael Storm

1889 - 1951

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0788 BASEBALL

Jerry Dorsey (outfielder)

1885 - 1924

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0891 LAWYER

Emory Buckner

1888 - 1941

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0924 WORLD WAR

Inez Crittenden

1887 - 1918

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0965 POLITICIAN

W. W. Conner

1882 - 1938

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