Black Liberation Walking Tour

Join us on a Conde Nast "6 Standout Black History Tours in the U.S., From California to Charleston" award winning, 2-hour walking experience through one of Oakland's most culturally rich neighbourhoods, Hoover/Foster. The Black Liberation Walking Tour will take you through West Oakland’s Hoover/Foster (GhostTown) neighborhood, that was once part of a Black cultural and economic center that housed Oakland's most prominent Black-owned businesses, blues and jazz clubs, and highly rated restaurants.

On the Black Liberation Walking Tour, you'll also discover how West Oakland residents are working on a vision to preserve the history, culture, and arts of historically Black spaces. The Friends of the Hoover-Durant Public Library are leading the fight to bring back our library, which was closed in 1981 after nearly 100 years.

This walking experience is guided by local native David Peters, founder of the West Oakland Cultural Action Network, and Gene Anderson, author of , an Oakland historian whose family has historical roots in West Oakland. Peters and Anderson are passionate about telling the history of this area as a way to share historical stories, and proclaim its Black heritage.

The experience starts at the location of the former St. Augustine's Episcopal Church at 27th and West, the initial site of the Black Panther Party's Breakfast Program; hear powerful stories from community organizers such as Annette Miller, and learn about the post-World War II "white flight" era's impact on West Oakland freeway infrastructure.

We want you to experience the Black history, culture, and arts that still exists and learn how we must act together to preserve the very unique history of West Oakland!

BOOK YOUR EXPERIENCE TODAY!

**Group booking available. Please email directly to: [email protected] re: Group booking

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About the Black Liberation Walking Tour (BLWT)

The Black Liberation Walking Tour (BLWT) is a community-led cultural asset map celebrating Hoover-Foster’s multi-generational Black history and culture. It asserts resident voices and documents sites of cultural and historical significance in our neighborhood. We celebrate belonging through the 100-year narrative ribbon leading from the early West Coast civil rights movement through the second wave of the Great Migration to the Black Liberative actions of the present day.

A project of the West Oakland Cultural Action Network (WOCAN), the BLWT captures oral histories to document the lives, art, and culture of long-time residents, historical figures and rapidly disappearing former Black cultural spaces. We are creating this archive to mitigate cultural erasure and physical displacement. We’re galvanizing a collaborative development vision grounded in claiming community and cultural spaces by working towards the re-establishment of the Hoover-Durant Public Library and acquiring community-controlled commercial spaces.

Host or Publisher David Peters