East Bay Yesterday

Walter Riley first got involved with political organizing when he was a 12-year-old boy protesting against Jim Crow-era segregation laws in North Carolina. Since then, he hosted an event with Malcolm X, managed a...

Berkeley’s waterfront has undergone many transformations. For millennia, the shoreline was dotted with Ohlone village sites, thriving amidst an abundance of fish and fowl. In the decades following the Gold Rush...

In a small, bunker-like laboratory in the East Bay hills, Alexander “Sasha” Shulgin created some of the world’s most powerful psychedelic drugs. Astonishingly, he didn’t try to hide his activities. On the contrary...

During the 1960s, America’s Cold War era monoculture was shattered by the arrival of birth control pills, civil rights protests, anti-war riots, LSD, rock & roll, and an unprecedented upsurge in youthful rebellion. As...

In February, America’s nuclear arms treaty with Russia expired, ushering in “a global rush for new weapons,” according to New York Times. Much of the next generation of the US nuclear arsenal will be developed at...

The USS Hornet fought in some of the biggest naval battles in world history, picked up astronauts returning from the first moon landing, and is allegedly one of the most haunted places in America. Three decades ago...

On December 21st, 2025, the Bay Area lost one of its oldest and most distinguished residents: The legendary Betty Reid Soskin passed away at the age of 104. To pay tribute to her extraordinary life and to celebrate her...

Historic houses offer a tangible connection to a city’s past, but maintaining them is difficult and expensive. Some of Oakland’s most unique structures are currently endangered due to deferred maintenance and budget...

If you were born after 1990, it might be easy to think that the world has always had wheelchair ramps, closed captions, and bathroom stalls for people with disabilities. But none of those things existed until a few...

Everyone has opinions on the Bay Area’s problems with housing, transit and public infrastructure, but Darrell Owens digs deep into the historical roots of these issues on his Substack “The Discourse Lounge.” When...

How did Jessica Mitford go from being an elite British debutante to fighting on the front lines of America’s early civil rights struggles? While two of her older sisters befriended Adolph Hitler, Jessica came to...

In recent years, volunteer-led groups like Urban Compassion Project have struggled to deal with illegal dumping in Oakland. Despite removing more than half a million pounds of trash this year, piles of garbage continue...

In 1973, Chile’s democratically elected socialist president Salvador Allende was toppled by a right-wing military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet. As news of the brutal repression that followed spread around the...

Tobie Gene Levingston left behind his life as a Louisiana sharecropper in the mid-1950s to work at an Oakland metal foundry. Within a few years, he started the East Bay Dragons, which grew to be one of the most...

There’s an area southeast of Lake Merritt that’s lined with abandoned buildings, boarded up storefronts, vacant lots, and decrepit warehouses. The neighborhoods here, Clinton and San Antonio, are some of Oakland’s...