East Bay Democratic Club Members, ca. 1950 Image Ownership: Public Domain

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The East Bay Democratic Club (EBDC) was founded in the late 1940s to help produce black political self-determination through electoral politics by organizing grassroots coalitions of East Bay African Americans.

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Founded by Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters activist D.G. Gibson, the Club included pharmacist and future state assemblyman Byron Rumford, future judge Allen Broussard, future mayor of Oakland Lionel Wilson, Cuban activist Evelio Grillo, and C.L. Dellums, the longtime head of the Brotherhood. Though predominantly African American and mostly male, the EBDC had several white and Hispanic members, as well as a significant contingent of women.

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One of its early successes was electing Bryon Rumford as District’s Assemblyman in 1948. In 1958, the EBDC organized a coalition with local labor unions to defeat a right-to-work initiative promoted by conservative Republican Sen. William F. Knowland, publisher of the Oakland Tribune.

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During the 1960s members of the East Bay Democratic Club played key roles in the Bay Area implementation of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty. Wilson and two other members, Norvel Smith and Don McCullum, helped African American residents take control of the Oakland Economic Development Council, the body that oversaw the implementation of the War on Poverty in Oakland. Oakland Post publisher Paul Cobb was also an influential member.

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The EBDC helped craft a coalition of African Americans and antiwar whites to elect Ronald V. Dellums for Congress in 1970. In the early 1970s as the Black Panther Party turned to electoral politics, the EBDC moved into coalition with them and worked on Panther Elaine Brown’s 1975 campaign for Oakland City Council. In 1977, EBDC co-founder Lionel Wilson was elected as Oakland’s first African American mayor with crucial support from the Black Panthers.

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The Oakland East Bay Democratic Club remains an important political force in the East Bay. Our focus today is representing the interests of the community of East Oakland. Our members include community, political and labor activists committed to making the world a better place for our children.

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Source: Robert Self, American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland (Princeton University Press, 2003).