OUSD names building after slain leader: ‘Thank you, Dr. Foster, for giving your life for this city.’

The Oakland Unified School District named a building Wednesday in honor of Superintendent Dr. Marcus A. Foster, the district’s first Black leader, who was assassinated in 1973.

The new administration building at 1011 Union St., which opened in February, now carries the name of the superintendent who was killed by members of the radical Symbionese Liberation Army in November 1973, just months before the group kidnapped heiress Patty Hearst in Berkeley.

Marsha Foster, the only child of Marcus and Albertine Foster, was present when the board voted unanimously for the resolution. She noted that it had taken 52 years for the district to honor her father, who was shot after leaving a school board meeting. Another administrator was wounded.

“The school district is now saying, ‘Thank you, Dr. Foster, for giving your life for this city and, more importantly, for the children of this city,'” she said.

A committee of district employees as well as students and community members suggested the honor, which seemed fitting, given that an educational farm that had carried Foster’s name closed many years ago, leaving the district with no physical commemoration of one of the first Black superintendents to lead a large school district in the United States. Even the education foundation that he pioneered and that later adopted his name, is not active — its website was down Wednesday and its status with the California Attorney General’s Office charity division is listed as delinquent.

Denise Saddler, who chaired the naming committee, acknowledged that the honor was a long time in coming. School Board member Mike Hutchinson agreed, saying, “I am very happy to see this wrong finally righted.”

Foster led the district from 1970 to 1973, a period when the Black Panthers were very active in Oakland, Hutchinson noted, and the movement toward social change was at full momentum.

“Please take some time to look into this legacy,” Hutchinson urged young people. “This is what helped build OUSD and Oakland. And if we can get back to leaning on these foundations, it should be able to set us up for a much brighter future.”

Student board member Maximus Simmons acknowledged that legacy, saying it instilled a sense of pride in him. “It’s Black men like him who inspire activists today. And we, Black people in general, wouldn’t be where we are without brave men like Dr. Foster, who was willing to give up his life and his children and family for an entire race of people, for his people,” he said.

Carrying on the mission

Foster came to OUSD from the Philadelphia School District, where he started as a teacher and rose into the administrative ranks. The Philadelphia district named an award and a field for Foster and fellowships were established in his name at UC Berkeley and the University of Pennsylvania. The education foundation he laid the groundwork for in Oakland went on to provide millions of dollars in benefits, including scholarships, to students over the next 50 years. In 2023, in light of the 50th anniversary of Foster’s murder, the Oakland Public Library established an exhibit that highlighted his work to unify the community and to introduce programs that would improve education for Black children.

His death scarred the district. Most of the small band that targeted him, reportedly for measures he promoted to keep children safe in school, were killed in a shootout with Los Angeles police in 1974, after several bombings and bank robberies that left a second person dead and several others wounded. Two would be convicted for Foster’s murder.

The building that now bears Foster’s name was constructed on the site that once held Cole Grammar School, a West Oakland landmark for several generations. It also was where Albertine Marcus, who remained in Oakland after her husband’s death, volunteered for many years, according to her daughter.

Retired Oakland teacher Herman Brown was a student at Cole and then taught there for more than a decade. A member of the naming committee, Brown told the board that Foster’s work in Oakland inspired him to become a teacher and give back to his community.

“I wanted to go back to Oakland to do what Dr. Foster was doing,” he said. “He motivated me. … I went back into Oakland for 46 years to carry on the mission that that man started.”

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