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 1890s Clear ×
Sidney Howard
1891 - 1939
Vivien Oakland
1895 - 1958
Frank M. Dixon
1892 - 1965
Lloyd Hamilton
1891 - 1935
James Van Trees
1890 - 1973
Albert White (diver)
1895 - 1982
Fern Emmett
1896 - 1946
Harry W. Hill
1890 - 1971
Ford Quint Elvidge
1892 - 1980
Anson Weeks
1896 - 1969
Herman C. Raymaker
1893 - 1944
John J. Allen Jr.
1899 - 1995
Phyllis Ackerman
1893 - 1977
Irish Meusel
1893 - 1963
Lew Fonseca
1899 - 1989
Ray Kremer
1893 - 1965
Charles M. White
1891 - 1977
Estelle Peck Ishigo
1899 - 1990
Tom Fitzsimmons
1890 - 1971
Orville Caldwell
1896 - 1967
R. Henry Grey
1891 - 1934
Virgil Markham
1899 - 1973
Ken Crawford (American football)
1898 - 1957
Pat Bohen
1890 - 1942
Jay Roberts
1890 - 1932
Charlie Flannigan
1891 - 1930
Emily Coleman
1899 - 1979
Red Baldwin
1894 - 1956
Oliver Deveta Hamlin Jr.
1892 - 1973