{"id":463690,"date":"2026-09-14T20:24:13","date_gmt":"2026-09-14T20:24:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/463690\/"},"modified":"2026-09-14T20:24:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-14T20:24:13","slug":"a-historically-black-college-in-oakland-a-task-force-is-dreaming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/463690\/","title":{"rendered":"A Historically Black College in Oakland? A Task Force Is Dreaming"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oakland could become home to a new HBCU, offering local students a culturally relevant college education.<\/p>\n

Sep 14, 2026<\/p>\n

Updated 12:33 pm PT<\/p>\n

Ashley McBride\/The Oaklandside <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Mayor Barbara Lee speaks during a press conference announcing new affordable housing for Oakland Unified School District teachers and school employees at a recently purchased residential building in Oakland on April 2, 2026.\u00a0(Beth LaBerge\/KQED)<\/p>\n

A task force is quietly working to expand higher education offerings in Oakland<\/a> by bringing a historically Black college or university here. And Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee<\/a> is central to the effort.<\/p>\n

There are a little over 100 recognized HBCUs in the country, but they are concentrated in the Southeast since many were established in the years following the Civil War, when African Americans were barred from most colleges and universities. The West Coast has only one historically Black educational institution \u2014 the Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science in Los Angeles, one of only a handful of historically Black medical schools in the nation. If an HBCU lands in Oakland, it could offer the first opportunity for undergraduate students in California to get a culturally relevant education closer to home.<\/p>\n

When students head east to enroll at an HBCU, they often don\u2019t come back, said Kim Thompson, a member of the Oakland HBCU task force. She described that as a loss for California\u2019s workforce.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a big brain drain and loss of students who could be staying here and gaining access to high-wage STEM careers that the Bay Area has to offer,\u201d Thompson told The Oaklandside. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of students we think could benefit from the culturally affirming education that an HBCU could provide.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"There are over 100 HBCUs in the U.S., mostly in the Southeast. The West Coast has only one, in Los Angeles.\u00a0(Joe Sohm\/Visions of America\/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

The Oakland HBCU initiative, a fiscally sponsored project of the\u00a0Oakland Fund<\/a>, officially launched last year and is still in the early stages. A volunteer task force composed of Mayor Lee along with individuals from business, higher education, civic and philanthropic communities in Oakland is leading the effort.<\/p>\n

The task force undertook a feasibility study this year to explore the potential economic impacts of a campus for Oakland and to identify which industries here are primed for growth. Thompson said the task force plans to publish the results of the study in the next month, but said they\u2019ve already identified technology, entrepreneurship, life sciences, artificial intelligence, logistics and transportation as areas of focus.<\/p>\n

The task force will then move to the next phase: solidifying a list of interested schools and settling on a location. The team is exploring a range of ideas, including a satellite campus for a single college, a hub center that would allow multiple colleges and universities to offer classes in Oakland and a partnership with the Peralta Community Colleges District to offer a pathway to a four-year degree from an HBCU.<\/p>\n

California\u2019s community colleges already have a\u00a0transfer pathway for students to enroll at HBCUs<\/a>, which guarantees admission to more than 30 colleges and comes with a $5,000 scholarship, but few students take it, Ta\u00edna Knox, another member of the task force, said. While tens of thousands of students transfer from community college to a UC or Cal State campus each year, those taking advantage of the HBCU transfer pathway number in the tens, Knox said. Five students received the Cal-HBCU transfer grant in 2024-2025, 10 in 2025-2026, and five payments are in progress for this academic year, according to the California Student Aid Commission.<\/p>\n

\"\"Oakland City Hall in Oakland on April 28, 2025. \u00a0(Martin do Nascimento\/KQED)<\/p>\n

Establishing an HBCU in Oakland could be crucial to stabilizing the Black population here, Lee said. When she was elected to Congress, 40% of Oakland was Black, she said, and now it\u2019s around 20%.<\/p>\n

\u201cHere in Oakland, gentrification, redlining, and systemic discrimination has been a driver of bringing our population down,\u201d she told The Oaklandside. \u201cThis would give some stability in many ways to the Black population and for everyone in Oakland to see that we still care about the Black community and Black students.\u201d<\/p>\n

In exploring potential locations, the task force has toured the former Holy Names University campus in the hills, as well as locations in downtown Oakland, but they don\u2019t want to commit to a site until they\u2019re further along in talks with the colleges.<\/p>\n

The group also held listening sessions last fall with students to gauge their interest in an HBCU here.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of students said, \u2018It\u2019d be great to go to an HBCU, but I\u2019m the first in my family to go to college, and it\u2019s expensive to travel out of state,\u2019\u201d Thompson said. \u201cBut if it were here, that would be a great alternative opportunity to go to an HBCU, which many students had an interest in attending.\u201d<\/p>\n

This story was originally published by\u00a0The Oaklandside<\/a>\u00a0and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oakland could become home to a new HBCU, offering local students a culturally relevant college education. Sep 14,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":463691,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[143,145,144],"class_list":["post-463690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=463690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463690\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/463691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=463690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=463690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=463690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}