Soul City: Oakland, U.S.A. Depicts Life in the Black Community of 1970s West Oakland 

BERKELEY, CALIF. — A powerful visual record of community, culture, and resilience, Soul City: Oakland, USA by photographer Ken Light brings the vibrant Black community of 1970s West Oakland into vivid focus. Featuring more than 120 stirring black-and-white photographs, this book offers a rare and intimate portrait of Black urban life in a major American city—one long celebrated alongside San Francisco’s Fillmore District as a “Harlem of the West.” The book will be published on September 22, 2026.

During the 1940s the Second Great Migration brought thousands of African Americans to Oakland as they sought jobs in the West Coast’s booming wartime industries and fled Jim Crow segregation of the American South. Hemmed in by housing discrimination and redlining, Black migrants largely settled in “the Bottoms,” better known today as West Oakland. In spite of barriers, this migration transformed Oakland into a thriving center of Black culture where a flourishing Black middle class of unionized industrial workers and business owners, as well as a dynamic blues scene, anchored by hubs like Esther’s Orbit Room, helped define the city’s cultural identity.

By the 1950s and 1960s, however, that prosperity faced mounting challenges. Manufacturing jobs disappeared, and urban renewal projects—including the construction of BART and the I-980 Freeway—cut through and around West Oakland, physically isolating neighborhoods and contributing to pollution and economic decline. These systemic deprivations, along with persistent police brutality, fueled political activism and gave rise to the Black Panther Party, founded in Oakland in 1966.

It was around this period of change that then 23-year-old photographer Ken Light began documenting the people of West Oakland. While working part-time doing layout and paste-up at The Oakland Post, a local Black newspaper, Light started photographing neighborhood residents whose lives expressed a powerful sense of identity, heritage, pride, and resilience. Light quickly became a familiar figure in the community—known simply as “the Cameraman.” Residents would wave him down in the street to have their photographs taken. Over the course of two years, from 1974 to 1976, he created an extraordinary visual portrait of daily life in West Oakland, capturing moments both somber and celebratory.

In the foreword to this edition, writer Ishmael Reed reflects on the historical significance of Light’s work: “Like Berkeley, Oakland is becoming a white city. But just as we gaze at photos of other historic Black zones that have been razed, Ken Light’s photos will remind future generations that there was a time when Blacks lived among deteriorating Victorians, and no matter how miserable the environment, they had pride and they had friends, made love, had jobs, ran businesses, and made much from little, which has been the strategy of Blacks since the slave ships landed.”

Soul City: Oakland, USA stands as both an artistic achievement and an essential historical document—capturing a community whose spirit, creativity, and resilience shaped Oakland’s identity.