Oakland, California  

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Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States.

Students Huey Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party at Merritt College in Oakland Hills neighborhood, which emphasized black power, advocated armed self-defense against police brutality, and was involved in several incidents that ended in the deaths of police officers and other Black Panther members. Among their social programs were feeding children and providing other services to the needy. During the 1970s, Oakland began to suffer serious violence and other problems related to gang-controlled dealing of heroin and cocaine when drug kingpin Felix Mitchell created the nation's first large-scale operation of this kind. Both violent crime and property crime increased during this period, and Oakland's murder rate rose to over twice that of San Francisco and New York.

As in many other American cities during the 1980s, crack cocaine became a serious problem in Oakland. Drug dealing in general, and the dealing of crack cocaine in particular, resulted in elevated rates of violent crime, causing Oakland to consistently be listed as one of America's most crime-ridden cities.

In 1980 Oakland's black population reached its 20th-century peak at approximately 47% of the overall city population.

During the mid-1990s, Oakland's economy began to recover as it transitioned to new types of jobs. In addition, the city participated in large development and urban renewal projects, concentrated especially in the downtown area, at the Port of Oakland, and at the Oakland International Airport.

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Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Oakland, California" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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