OUSD Celebrates AAPI Heritage Month: Honoring the Communities That Shape Oakland

May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, a time to honor the histories, cultures, resilience, and contributions of Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander communities.

Here in Oakland, this celebration is deeply local. Across OUSD’s district-run schools and programs, more than 3,600 students identify as Asian, Filipino, or Pacific Islander. OUSD is also profoundly multilingual: 48.3% of students speak a language other than English at home, and at least 74 non-English languages are spoken by our families, including Cantonese and Vietnamese. This month, we honor the languages, family stories, and community knowledge our students bring every day.

Oakland Chinatown, 1970s. Photo from Visit Oakland.

Oakland’s AAPI history stretches back well over 160 years. Oakland’s Chinatown took root in the 1850s as Chinese immigrants settled near the Oakland Estuary and downtown neighborhoods. Many arrived during the Gold Rush era to find a fortune, while others worked in railroads, agriculture, domestic work, and industries that shaped the East Bay. For generations, Chinatown has remained a community anchor, surviving exclusion, redevelopment pressures, displacement, and anti-Asian violence.

The Domoto Nursery in Oakland, 1885. Photo from Living with Flowers: The California Flower Market History by Gary Kawaguchi.

Oakland was also once home to thriving Japanese American communities whose history is not as widely visible today. Before World War II, Japanese American life was centered in West Oakland, Chinatown, and East Oakland’s nursery and floral businesses. Families built churches, language schools, markets, laundries, photo studios, and other small businesses. Nursery families, including the Domoto and Korematsu families, helped build the East Bay’s floral industry before Executive Order 9066 forced Japanese American families from their homes and communities. Filipino workers also helped lead West Coast farmworker and cannery organizing. 

During the civil rights era, Bay Area students and organizers helped reshape how Asian American communities understood their place in broader movements for justice. In 1968, UC Berkeley activists helped popularize the term “Asian American” as a political identity rooted in solidarity with Black, Indigenous, Chicanx/Latinx, and anti-war movements. That spirit carried into the Third World Liberation Front strikes, where students organized for Ethnic Studies and more representative education. In Oakland, it was visible in Asian American support for Black liberation and the “Free Huey” (Newton, co-founder of the Black Panthers) movement.

Asian American demonstrators rally for Huey P. Newton’s release, 1969. Photo by Roz Payne.

By the late 1970s and 1980s, war and displacement in Southeast Asia reshaped communities across the Bay Area. In Oakland, Vietnamese refugee families helped build small business networks in Eastlake and along the East 12th Street/International Boulevard corridor, now known to many as Oakland’s Little Saigon. In Fruitvale, Mien elders and families have carried cultural knowledge through foodways and gardens, including at Peralta Hacienda Historical Park. Organizations such as Lao Family Community Development and East Bay Asian Youth Center reflect this history of resettlement, youth advocacy, mutual aid, and community care.

Pacific Islander communities are also essential to Oakland and OUSD. Through IKUNA and OUSD’s Office of Equity, students are building pride and leadership through cultural learning, family connection, dance, literature, language, and history.

To find tools for celebrating this month, explore OUSD’s AAPI Heritage Month Resource Guide, which includes resources and ideas for honoring AAPI students, families, and staff.

Wishing everyone a joyful and meaningful Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.