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Dedication to Matt Crawford

Matt Crawford (1903-1996)

(Healer, Comrade, Fighter, Witness, Teacher, Mentor, Friend)

Dedication to Matt Crawford
The history of West Berkeley is the history of the people who have lived and worked here. One such person was Matt Crawford, union organizer, community activist and advocate for social justice. His life offers a road-map to the important social and political movements of the 20th century.

Matt Crawford came to the Bay Area as a boy in 1911. He arrived by train with his family to find a new life, economic opportunity and relief from the oppressive Jim Crow segregation laws of the American south. Marrying and starting a family, he settled in West Berkeley, where he lived on Delaware Street until his death in August, 1996. Trained as a chiropractor, he practiced in Oakland for several years during the 1930s and maintained an interest in natural healing throughout his life, along with an avid enjoyment of nature, photography and hiking in the California wilderness. But in 1932, Matt decided to devote his life to social change. He signed on with the Congress of Industrial Organizations to organize the growing numbers of Blacks working in the industries lining the San Pablo Avenue flatlands from Richmond to Oakland. His efforts against racism opened up jobs for minorities in the transit system and the telephone company.

In the 1940s, Matt started working for the Berkeley Consumers Cooperative and later for the Coop Credit Union, where he served as a loan officer for many years. With Matt's help (and the help of his co-worker Maudelle Shirek), thousands of people of color were able to buy homes in West and South Berkeley. Matt helped establish the Oakland Labor Academy, a seedbed for radical leadership that promoted the tradition of multiculturalism and social change that so many of us take for granted today. Pathbreaking artists such as singer Paul Robeson, Jr., writers Langston Hughes and Jessica Mitford (one of the founders of the Acton Street Cultural Center) and National Poet Laureate Maya Angelou were long-time friends of Matt Crawford. In the 1960's, Matt worked to break the Berkeley "Color line" of housing segregation. In the 1970s, he helped organize the African-American community and the young Berkeley Citizens Action organization to elect the city's first African American city council members, including now-Congressman Ron Dellums. After retiring from the Coop Credit Union, he served on its Board of Directors for many years. When he stepped down in 1992, he joined the Board of the West Berkeley Neighborhood Development Corporation. He served as the treasurer of WBNDC for two years before deciding to retire in earnest at age 93. In June of 1996, only two months before his death, we voted to honor him in our first PrideGuide.

Matt's vision, wisdom and experience inspired everyone who came into contact with him. WBNDC is proud to dedicate the first edition of the West Berkeley PrideGuide to Matt Nathaniel Crawford.