Commentary

COMMENTARY: Something to sing about

FLORIDA COURIER — Robert F. Smith’s gift of paying off the student loans of Morehouse College’s 2019 graduating class stunned the school’s students and faculty, but it was just the latest act of philanthropy by the quiet billionaire tech investment executive who is concerned that economic opportunities for African-Americans have narrowed.

Published

6 years ago

May 30, 2019

Oakland Post

By Wire Reports

WHO IS THIS MAN? A HUMBLE BUT ‘WOKE’ BLACK BILLIONAIRE

ATLANTA – Robert F. Smith’s gift of paying off the student loans of Morehouse College’s 2019 graduating class stunned the school’s students and faculty, but it was just the latest act of philanthropy by the quiet billionaire tech investment executive who is concerned that economic opportunities for African-Americans have narrowed.

“My family is going to create a grant to eliminate your student loans!” Smith told the graduates during his commencement address. “You great Morehouse men are bound only by the limits of your own conviction and creativity.”

MILLIONS IN DEBT ELIMINATED

Smith made the surprise announcement Sunday while giving the college’s commencement address. His gift is estimated at $40 million-plus.

Smith, 56, is the nation’s richest African-American – ahead of Oprah Winfrey–with a net worth of $5 billion, according to Forbes. He amassed his wealth as chief executive of Vista Equity Partners, a private equity firm in Austin, Texas, that he founded in 2000.

Vista Equity buys, grows and sells companies in the software and other technology fields. It manages $46 billion in investments with a portfolio of more than 50 companies that employ more than 60,000 people, according to the firm’s website.

TOP BLACK COMPANY

His company is No. 1 on the BE100s (Black Enterprise magazine’s annual list of the most successful Black-owned companies) Private Equity list with $14 billion in capital under management. His company has been named to the BE 100s list for about a decade. Vista Equity Partners was BE’s 2013 Financial Services Company of the Year.

Smith seldom gives interviews and operated in relative obscurity until a few years ago. His profile began growing in step with his philanthropy, much of which is aimed at supporting the African-American community, and with more public appearances.

Speaking at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, Calif., this month, Smith warned that educational and economic opportunities for African-Americans had narrowed since the time he and other Denver children were bused to recently desegregated schools in the area.

‘Great public schools’

“There is only one of those folks that were on that bus that actually got incarcerated,” he said. “We have doctors. We have lawyers. We have politicians. We have investors – all because we had the opportunity to get into a great public school.

“That dynamic lived in my neighborhood. It doesn’t live in that neighborhood today as much as it did then. The economic opportunity that was afforded me, I think, has changed. It has shrunk.”

Smith said African-American communities are as segregated today as in the 1950s, subjecting them to “economic underdevelopment” that doesn’t allow them to fully participate in the economy.

He called for companies to invest in the problem, including by offering internships to underprivileged students who may not even be aware of the job opportunities created by the tech revolution.

Constantly giving

Months before saying he’d wipe out the student loans of this year’s graduating class, Smith announced a $1.5 million gift to Morehouse. He also has donated $20 million to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African-American History and Culture in Washington, and he and his foundation have given $50 million to Cornell University, his alma mater.

In 2016, Smith became the first African-American to be named chairman of Carnegie Hall. He had served on the celebrated New York concert venue’s board and was a donor, and hall officials cited his passion for music and his desire to help undeserved communities connect with the arts.

At a gala last fall for the City of Hope – the cancer hospital and research center in Duarte, Calif. – Smith was the largest individual donor, with a gift of $500,000 that was earmarked for prostate cancer treatment for Black men and breast cancer research for Black women.

Smith also signed on to the Giving Pledge, a commitment by the world’s wealthiest individuals and families to dedicate a majority of their wealth to philanthropy. The concept was formed by Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett.

Living large

The Colorado native also enjoys the fruits of his success. He owns a $59 million penthouse in Manhattan and a $19.5 million mansion in Malibu, Calif., among other properties, according to media reports.

Smith has five children, three from his first marriage and two with wife Hope Dworaczyk, a former Playboy model he married in 2015.

The son of two high school principals with doctorate degrees, Smith grew up in a mostly Black middle-class neighborhood. In a Washington Post interview, he recalled that his father made sure music filled the house and that as they went to bed, the recordings of African-American opera star Leontyne Price played on the stereo.

STEM, then business

According to Black Enterprise, “Smith started his early life out as a computer geek and even interned at Bell Labs. Although he worked in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) field for some time after earning a degree in chemical engineering from Cornell, the financial world beckoned.”

Smith earned a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from Cornell, followed by an MBA from Columbia Business School and a stint at Kraft General Foods. He switched to tech investment banking in 1994 when he joined Goldman Sachs, where he worked on mergers and acquisitions in Silicon Valley and elsewhere, then stepped out on his own and started Vista Equity.

‘I can do that’

As his success and wealth grew, Smith maintained a low profile and shied away from being photographed. But now he’s more comfortable with his public profile in part because he wants young African-Americans to see what he’s accomplishing, Smith told the Post.

“Now I want people to say, ‘If Robert Smith can do it, I can do that and more,’” he said. “I could just live off my money. It might be a good life, though it wouldn’t be a fulfilled life.”

‘Love your community’

According to Black Enterprise, at an event last year at the Oakland, Calif., home of business strategist Carl Hackney, Smith spoke with a gathering of mostly Black politicians, venture capitalists, tech entrepreneurs, and philanthropists. He weighed in on the importance of investing in communities and his advice for future generations.

“Love your community by voting,” he said. “Love your community by taking care of your community. Love your community by actually doing something wherever you can.

“Think about what is it that you uniquely bring to a community that changes that community. Sometimes, it is words of inspiration. Most of the time it’s acts of inspiration. It is doing something, it is leading, it is taking advantage of what it is you have to provide.

“Sometimes what you have to provide is walking a child home every night so they feel safe. Sometimes it’s making sure a child is read to at night because their parent is at work. Sometimes it’s a scholarship. Sometimes it’s the encouragement to go dream big, go take the test, go try something different, go get an internship.

“Or it’s creating an internship, like the internship I got at Bell Labs when I was 17 years old, that allows them to stretch their imaginations,” he said.

Information from James F. Peltz and Laurence Darmiento of the Los Angeles Times/TNS and Samara Lynn, Caroline Clarke and Selena Hill of Black Enterprise was used to prepare this report.

This article originally appeared in the Florida Courier.

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Oakland Post: Week of November 5 – 11, 2025

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of November 5 – 11, 2025

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Oakland Post: Week of October 29 – November 4, 2025

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of October 29 – November 4, 2025

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Past, Present, Possible! Oakland Residents Invited to Reimagine the 980 Freeway

Organizers ask attendees coming to 1233 Preservation Park Way to think of the event as a “time portal”—a walkable journey through the Past (harm and flourishing), Present (community conditions and resilience), and Future (collective visioning).

Published

3 weeks ago

October 27, 2025

Oakland Post

Hundreds of residents in West Oakland were forced out by eminent domain before construction began on the 980 freeway in 1968. Courtesy photo.

By Randolph Belle
Special to The Post

Join EVOAK!, a nonprofit addressing the historical harm to West Oakland since construction of the 980 freeway began in 1968, will hold a block party on Oct. 25 at Preservation Park for a day of imagination and community-building from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Organizers ask attendees coming to 1233 Preservation Park Way to think of the event as a “time portal”—a walkable journey through the Past (harm and flourishing), Present (community conditions and resilience), and Future (collective visioning).

Activities include:

Interactive Visioning: Site mapping, 3-D/digital modeling, and design activities to reimagine housing, parks, culture, enterprise, and mobility.
Story & Memory: Oral history circles capturing life before the freeway, the rupture it caused, and visions for repair.
Data & Policy: Exhibits on health, environment, wealth impacts, and policy discussions.
Culture & Reflection: Films, installations, and performances honoring Oakland’s creativity and civic power.

The site of the party – Preservation Park – itself tells part of the story of the impact on the community. Its stately Victorians were uprooted and relocated to the site decades ago to make way for the I-980 freeway, which displaced hundreds of Black families and severed the heart of West Oakland. Now, in that same space, attendees will gather to reckon with past harms, honor the resilience that carried the community forward, and co-create an equitable and inclusive future.

A Legacy of Resistance

In 1979, Paul Cobb, publisher of the Post News Group and then a 36-year-old civil-rights organizer, defiantly planted himself in front of a bulldozer on Brush Street to prevent another historic Victorian home from being flattened for the long-delayed I-980 Freeway. Refusing to move, Cobb was arrested and hauled off in handcuffs—a moment that landed him on the front page of the Oakland Tribune.

Cobb and his family had a long history of fighting for their community, particularly around infrastructure projects in West Oakland. In 1954, his family was part of an NAACP lawsuit challenging the U.S. Post Office’s decision to place its main facility in the neighborhood, which wiped out an entire community of Black residents.

In 1964, they opposed the BART line down Seventh Street—the “Harlem of the West.” Later, Cobb was deeply involved in successfully rerouting the Cypress Freeway out of the neighborhood after the Loma Prieta earthquake.

The 980 Freeway, a 1.6-mile stretch, created an ominous barrier severing West Oakland from Downtown. Opposition stemmed from its very existence and the national practice of plowing freeways through Black communities with little input from residents and no regard for health, economic, or social impacts. By the time Cobb stood before the bulldozer, construction was inevitable, and his fight shifted toward jobs and economic opportunity.

Fast-forward 45 years: Cobb recalled the story at a convening of “Super OGs” organized to gather input from legacy residents on reimagining the corridor. He quickly retrieved his framed Tribune front page, adding a new dimension to the conversation about the dedication required to make change. Themes of harm repair and restoration surfaced again and again, grounded in memories of a thriving, cohesive Black neighborhood before the freeway.

The Lasting Scar

The 980 Freeway was touted as a road to prosperity—funneling economic opportunity into the City Center, igniting downtown commerce, and creating jobs. Instead, it cut a gash through the city, erasing 503 homes, four churches, 22 businesses, and hundreds of dreams. A promised second approach to the Bay Bridge never materialized.

Planning began in the late 1940s, bulldozers arrived in 1968, and after years of delays and opposition, the freeway opened in 1985. By then, Oakland’s economic engines had shifted, leaving behind a 600-foot-wide wound that resulted in fewer jobs, poorer health outcomes, and a divided neighborhood. The harm of displacement and loss of generational wealth was compounded through redlining, disinvestment, drugs, and the police state. Many residents fled to outlying cities, while those who stayed carried forward the spirit of perseverance.

The Big Picture

At stake now is up to 67 acres of new, buildable land in Downtown West Oakland. This time, we must not repeat the institutional wrongs of the past. Instead, we must be as deliberate in building a collective, equitable vision as planners once were in destroying communities.

EVOAK!’s strategy is rooted in four pillars: health, housing, economic development, and cultural preservation. These were the very foundations stripped away, and they are what they aim to reclaim. West Oakland continues to suffer among the worst social determinants of health in the region, much of it linked to the three freeways cutting through the neighborhood.

The harms of urban planning also decimated cultural life, reinforced oppressive public safety policies, underfunded education, and fueled poverty and blight.

Healing the Wound

West Oakland was once the center of Black culture during the Great Migration—the birthplace of the Black Panther Party and home to the “School of Champions,” the mighty Warriors of McClymonds High. Drawing on that legacy, we must channel the community’s proud past into a bold, community-led future that restores connection, sparks innovation, and uplifts every resident.

Two years ago, Caltrans won a federal Reconnecting Communities grant to fund Vision 980, a community-driven study co-led by local partners. Phase 1 launched in Spring 2024 with surveys and outreach; Phase 2, a feasibility study, begins in 2026. Over 4,000 surveys have already been completed. This once-in-a-lifetime opportunity could transform the corridor into a blank slate—making way for accessible housing, open space, cultural facilities, and economic opportunity for West Oakland and the entire region.

Leading with Community

In parallel, EVOAK! is advancing a community-led process to complement Caltrans’ work. EVOAK! is developing a framework for community power-building, quantifying harm, exploring policy and legislative repair strategies, structuring community governance, and hosting arts activations to spark collective imagination. The goal: a spirit of co-creation and true collaboration.

What EVOAK! Learned So Far

Through surveys, interviews, and gatherings, residents have voiced their priorities: a healthy environment, stable housing, and opportunities to thrive. Elders with decades in the neighborhood shared stories of resilience, community bonds, and visions of what repair should look like.

They heard from folks like Ezra Payton, whose family home was destroyed at Eighth and Brush streets; Ernestine Nettles, still a pillar of civic life and activism; Tom Bowden, a blues man who performed on Seventh Street as a child 70 years ago; Queen Thurston, whose family moved to West Oakland in 1942; Leo Bazille who served on the Oakland City Council from 1983 to 1993; Herman Brown, still organizing in the community today; Greg Bridges, whose family’s home was picked up and moved in the construction process; Martha Carpenter Peterson, who has a vivid memory of better times in West Oakland; Sharon Graves, who experienced both the challenges and the triumphs of the neighborhood; Lionel Wilson, Jr., whose family were anchors of pre-freeway North Oakland; Dorothy Lazard, a resident of 13th Street in the ’60s and font of historical knowledge; Bishop Henry Williams, whose simple request is to “tell the truth,” James Moree, affectionately known as “Jimmy”; the Flippin twins, still anchored in the community; and Maxine Ussery, whose father was a business and land owner before redlining.

EVOAK! will continue to capture these stories and invites the public to share theirs as well.

Beyond the Block Party

The 980 Block Party is just the beginning. Beyond this one-day event, EVOAK! Is building a long-term process to ensure West Oakland’s future is shaped by those who lived its past. To succeed, EVOAK! Is seeking partners across the community—residents, neighborhood associations, faith groups, and organizations—to help connect with legacy residents and host conversations.

980 Block Party Event Details
Saturday, Oct. 25
10 a.m. – 4 p.m.
Preservation Park, 1233 Preservation Park Way, Oakland, CA 94612
980BlockParty.org
info@evoak.org