By Clifford Williams

    To his friends, family and peers, Thomas Berkley was affectionately known as “Mr. B.” To others, he was known as a worldclass athlete, prominent attorney, activist, newspaper publisher and a shrewd businessman.
    In whatever capacity you knew Tom Berkley, it was a relationship you wouldn’t soon forget. His booming laughter echoes in memories and instantly creates a visual image of the man who left a personal impression on many people.
   Berkley passed away on December 27, 2001. Before he left, however, he established a legacy that will be recalled by future generations.
    Berkley was born on August 9, 1915, the seventh son of a seventh son, and many predicted he would therefore have good fortune. That prediction rang true.
    Today the name of Berkley is permanently enshrined on two significant landmarks in downtown Oakland. One is a busy thoroughfare, originally known as 20th St., which has been renamed Thomas L. Berkley Way in a move orchestrated by the Oakland City Council.
    Attorney Donald Hopkins, one of Berkley’s peers, noted that the naming of Berkley Way would be, for Tom, “the realization of the dream he held for a better Oakland, a progressive Oakland and an Oakland which took pride in the wondrous talents of its entire people.
   “He would be proud that the street on which his name will forever be emblazoned will be one which, in the very near future, will be the cornerstone of a new Oakland community, a community about which he had dreamed, for which he had planned and of which his memory will forever be a part,” said Hopkins.
    The other landmark is a newly developed $50 million construction project that now houses Alameda County’s Social Services Agency. It was recently dedicated as the North County Self Sufficiency Center at Thomas L. Berkley Square. The new development occupies an area where the former Oakland Post and Hotel Royal once stood.

    In his youth Berkley was a gifted academic and world-class track and field athlete at UCLA where he competed with fellow athlete and good friend, former LA mayor Tom Bradley. Berkley graduated in 1938 and later attended UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall and Hastings School of Law, receiving his doctorate in law in 1942.
    He practiced law for a year and was then drafted by the U.S. Army as a private during World War II. He later rose to the rank of second lieutenant.
    Following the war Berkley organized a law firm in Berkeley under the name of Thomas Berkley & Associates. At the time, his firm was known as the largest ethnically integrated, bilingual law firm in the nation. In 1972 Berkley purchased a 35,000-square-foot building in Oakland and later moved his various legal and business operations to the new facility.
    During this time Berkley was responsible for helping many prominent figures in Oakland make progress with their careers. This included more than 100 lawyers who received their early training from Berkley, and Oakland and Berkeley mayors Lionel Wilson, Warren Widener and Gus Newport.
    In addition to his legal affairs, Berkley was also a publisher. The building he purchased on 20th St. and San Pablo Ave. housed the Post Newspaper Group, including the Oakland Post and El Mundo newspapers, complete with printing presses. The Post, which during the 1970s and 1980s had the distinction of being the largest African American tri-weekly newspaper in the nation, reflected Berkley’s cross-cultural, bilingual tradition.
    The Post served for almost four decades as an invaluable purveyor of news and religious issues in the Bay Area, targeting areas that are 90 percent or more African American and Hispanic throughout Berkeley, Oakland, Richmond, San Francisco and the Peninsula.
    The policies and influence of the Oakland Post and El Mundo resulted in Berkley’s 1966 invitation to Mexico, where he was honored for outstanding contributions to intercultural understanding between Hispanics and African Americans. Berkley spoke Spanish fluently.

Next week: Thomas Berkley’s continuing legacy.