On April 14, the Oakland City Council voted to purchase the former Community Foods Market building at 3105 San Pablo Ave for a new Oakland Public Library branch.
Volunteer group Friends of Hoover Durant Public Library has been advocating for a new branch in West Oakland since 2013, hosting monthly meetings and Street Corner Libraries to donate books and gain community support.
”All communities deserve to have amenities like a library,” states organization chair Alternier Cook, “so people can have access to the kind of information they need for whatever aspects in their life, wherever their life journey is taking them…it’s something that is missing from our community.”
The closest library branches are all at least a mile away and difficult to access, particularly for children, elders, and the disabled. The new library would serve the neighborhoods of McClymonds, Clawson, Western Longfellow, Pill Hill, and Mosswood, in addition to Hoover-Foster.
The Hoover-Foster neighborhood, also known as Hoover-Durant, has not had a library for 45 years since the closure of the Telegrove and North Oakland branches in 1950 and 1981. Starting in 1936, the two branches were targeted for closure as a result of discriminatory redlining, which is when financial services are withheld from certain areas based on their racial demographics. A letter from a library executive deemed the Hoover neighborhood as “rapidly changing in character” and “not a reading neighborhood.”
The area has a rich cultural history, once serving as a destination for people fleeing the Jim Crow South. But freeway construction during the 1960s displaced thousands of African Americans, and throughout the 80s and 90s, the neighborhood faced crime, drug sales, and police brutality. Since then, residents have described their neighborhood as “neglected.” The Friends of the Hoover Durant Public Library are part of the effort to revitalize the community, hoping a new library branch will serve as a safe place for the public, particularly youth and families.
“The library is also really important for young people for social interaction, and that is what is sorely missing,” Cook states. “The way we want to set it up [is] as a community center. A destination for the community to keep young people from being isolated from each other so that they have a safe place to go where they can mingle with their peers and engage with their neighbors.”
Cook expressed her interest in getting youth involved in the process, whether that be through volunteering or merely providing input. She also mentioned that the organization was developing a student internship program, potentially offering academic credit or a stipend.
“We desperately need young people to come and work with us to tell us what they want in the library,” she adds. “We need a young person’s perspective. We can’t guess, we need to hear it from you.”
Community input has been a major aspect of the fight for another library. The Friends of the Hoover Durant Public Library partnered with the City of Oakland and Oakland Public Library Services to conduct a feasibility study that worked to identify neighborhood residents’ main goals, wishes, and concerns. The former Community Foods was identified as the top choice of location based on the study’s results.
But the process hasn’t been easy—gaining enough support to fund a whole library has proven difficult. A few years ago, the city applied for a state grant to fund the library, but the request was denied without a site. Now, the city has finally authorized the purchase of the Community Foods property for $3.5 million. The funding comes partially from Measure KK and Measure U funds, including leftover money from other city-sponsored library projects.
And the fight isn’t over. Millions more are still necessary to fully open and operate a library. According to Oakland Public Library staff, it could be another two to ten years until the library is finally able to open.
“Things like this don’t happen quickly,” states Cook. “Even though we’ve reached a milestone, we still have a long way to go.”