Black Liberation Walking Tour

8/20/2022″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 Legendary Locals of Oakland , 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.”