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
- Field: Lawyer Clear ×
Edwin Meese
Born 1931
Aaron Sapiro
1884 - 1959
Saundra Brown Armstrong
Born 1947
Bill Lockyer
Born 1941
Howard Lincoln
Born 1940
Jay Bybee
Born 1953
Clyde Doyle
1887 - 1963
Edward M. Chen
Born 1953
John Lansdale Jr.
1912 - 2003
Charles Stetson Wheeler
1863 - 1923
Richard C. Tallman
Born 1953
Dorothy McCullough Lee
1901 - 1981
David M. Louie
Born 1951
Justin P. Wilson
Born 1945
Joseph Grodin
Born 1930
Lawrence Joseph O'Neill
Born 1952
William B. Shubb
Born 1938
John P. Vukasin Jr.
1928 - 1993
John Mendez
Born 1955
David Roger
Born 1961
Haben Girma
Born 1988
Milton Lewis Schwartz
1920 - 2005
James Keith Singleton Jr.
Born 1939
Edward C. DuMont
Born 1962
Wiley Manuel
1927 - 1981
Emory Buckner
1888 - 1941
Alfred Delucchi
Died 2008
Richard Jencks
1921 - 2014
Lloyd Hudson Burke
1916 - 1988
Walter Early Craig
1909 - 1986
Lucas A. Powe Jr.
Born 1943
Oliver Deveta Hamlin Jr.
1892 - 1973