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: Politician Clear ×
Kamala Harris
Born 1964
Jon Kyl
Born 1942
Ron Dellums
1935 - 2018
Frank M. Dixon
1892 - 1965
Val Peterson
1903 - 1983
David M. McIntosh
Born 1958
Libby Schaaf
Born 1965
Jack Z. Anderson
1904 - 1981
Carina Vance Mafla
Born 1977
John J. Allen Jr.
1899 - 1995
John F. Baldwin Jr.
1915 - 1966
Brian Moore (political activist)
Born 1943
Wally George
1931 - 2003
Daniel Wells Jr.
1808 - 1902
Sharon Percy Rockefeller
Born 1944
Heather Fargo
Born 1952
Mike Eng
Born 1946
Denise Juneau
Born 1967
Maxine Moul
Born 1947
Vincent Orange
Born 1957
Tom Johnson (Illinois politician)
1945 - 2018
Wendell R. Beitzel
Born 1943
Antonio Parkinson
-
George Miller Jr.
1914 - 1969
Ellen Corbett
Born 1954
Sue Chew
-
John A. Nejedly
1914 - 2006
Randy Smith (politician)
Born 1960
Linda Berglin
Born 1944
Hubert Houser
Born 1942
Hans Riemer
1901 - 1963
Otto J. Zahn
1872 - 1965
Don Mulford
1915 - 2000
Sandré Swanson
Born 1948
Rutherford B. Irones
1877 - 1948
Curt Bromm
Born 1945
Matt Connealy
Born 1951
Stewart Iverson
Born 1950
Michael Sweeney (politician)
-
W. W. Conner
1882 - 1938
Ervin Dennis
Born 1936
Catherine Emmanuelle
Born 1980
Richard M. Romero
Born 1944
Andrew Nisbet Jr.
1921 - 2013
Carol Boyd Hallett
Born 1937
Louis Francis
-
John A. O'Connell
-
Charles W. Fisher (American politician)
-
Richard M. Lyman
-
John R. Jones (Washington politician)
1876 - 1972