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 1910s Clear ×
Jo Van Fleet
1914 - 1996
Don Budge
1915 - 2000
Kenneth Tobey
1917 - 2002
Robert Duncan (poet)
1919 - 1988
Anthony Boucher
1911 - 1968
Fred Korematsu
1919 - 2005
Gordon Jones (actor)
1911 - 1963
David Berg
1919 - 1994
Herbert Anderson
1917 - 1994
Everett Ruess
1914 - 1934
Russell Garcia (composer)
1916 - 2011
Jack Soo
1917 - 1979
Archie Williams
1915 - 1993
John Carl Warnecke
1919 - 2010
Ralph S. Phillips
1913 - 1998
Julio Gallo
1910 - 1993
Miles White
1914 - 2000
Dong Kingman
1911 - 2000
Wally Rose
1913 - 1997
Clyde Wiegand
1915 - 1996
Frank Kovacs
1919 - 1990
Winslow Hall (rower)
1912 - 1995
Daniel M. Popper
1913 - 1999
Sally Phipps
1911 - 1978
Florence Wysinger Allen
1913 - 1997
Toshio Mori
1910 - 1980
Jake Porter
1916 - 1993
Howard Mitchell
1911 - 1988
Earle Gorton Linsley
1910 - 2000
John F. Baldwin Jr.
1915 - 1966
Joe Abreu
1913 - 1993
Howard Brodie
1915 - 2010
John Larkin (actor, born 1912)
1912 - 1965
Carl B. Koford
1915 - 1979
Homer John Scoggan
1911 - 1986
Keith Robertson (writer)
1914 - 1991
John Lansdale Jr.
1912 - 2003
Marty Links
1917 - 2008
Cookie Lavagetto
1912 - 1990
John Milton Ward IV
1917 - 2011
Jim Tobin
1912 - 1969
Rosalie Moore
1910 - 2001
Homer Page
1918 - 1985
David C. Waybur
1919 - 1945
Ruth Leach Amonette
1916 - 2004
George Miller Jr.
1914 - 1969
Bill Brenzel
1910 - 1979
John A. Nejedly
1914 - 2006
Chuck Fenenbock
1917 - 1998
Harry Mattos
1911 - 1992
Don Mulford
1915 - 2000
Brian Sullivan (singer)
1912 - 1969
Linc Blakely
1912 - 1976
Ray Lamanno
1919 - 1994
Ed Fernandes
1918 - 1968
Lloyd Noel Ferguson
1918 - 2011
Len Gabrielson (first baseman)
1915 - 2000
Don Graham (developer)
1914 - 2010
Lloyd Hudson Burke
1916 - 1988
Eddie Leishman
1910 - 1972