Near the end of the night, some twenty honorees stood on the ballroom stage at the Oakland Marriott City Center holding glass awards, framed by an arch of black and gold balloons. The two names at the top of the program belonged to Oakland’s mayor and to a trial lawyer whose firm has spent decades in courtrooms across the East Bay.
The NAACP Oakland Branch presented its 2026 Civil Rights Presidential Awards to Mayor Barbara Lee and Gordon Greenwood, an attorney with Kazan, McClain, Satterley & Greenwood, at its Freedom Fund Gala on Friday, October 30. The gala, staged under the theme “A Celebration of We, The People,” is the branch’s signature fundraiser, the night that underwrites a year of voter work, housing advocacy and youth programs in Oakland.
For Lee, the honor ran in both directions. She is Oakland’s first Black woman mayor, sworn in last year after 27 years in Congress, and her family’s history with the NAACP predates her career. Her mother, Mildred Parish Massey, was one of the first twelve students named in the NAACP lawsuit that integrated Texas Western College, now the University of Texas at El Paso. Her former intern Justin Jones, now a Tennessee state representative, came through the Oakland branch’s own ACT-SO program for high school students. When branch president Cynthia Adams signed the evening’s awards, Lee’s among them, the citation closed a circle that opened before Lee ever held office.
Greenwood’s recognition pointed at a different kind of record: the courtroom. His Oakland firm represents workers and families in asbestos litigation, work that rarely produces a ballroom moment. The branch put his name beside the mayor’s anyway, a pairing that said the fight for civil rights in Oakland runs through City Hall and through civil suits alike.
Dr. Jacqueline Thompson, senior pastor of Allen Temple Baptist Church, delivered the keynote address. Bryan Gallo, a journalist and meteorologist at KTVU, served as emcee, and his station carried the gala on its 10 p.m. newscast that night.
The rest of the slate reached across the city’s civic life. Loren Taylor received the Political Action Award and took the podium himself, a year after Lee defeated him in the special election that made her mayor. Two journalists took home Public Affairs Awards: Dave Clark of KTVU, whose glass plaque cited his distinguished journalism career, and Pam Moore, honored for distinguished service in journalism. Father Aidan McAleenan received one of the branch’s special NAACP awards. Further honors went to leaders in education, health, community work, social justice and entrepreneurship, with ACT-SO and Youth & College Division banners set out among the trophies.
The money raised Friday night has assignments waiting for it. The branch’s Political Action Committee runs a nonpartisan voter empowerment program built to raise turnout among Black Oaklanders and other voters of color. President Adams’s stated agenda for the branch includes proactive prenatal care for African American women, fair housing, education reform and literacy, and help for residents facing discrimination, from health resources to job referrals. Its scholarships surface each June at a Juneteenth ceremony honoring graduates headed to HBCUs, Oakland Unified schools, Oakland Promise and the Legacy of Holy Names University Scholars program. The branch has not announced a fundraising total for the gala.
Three days after the last award was handed over, Oakland votes in the midterm elections. The branch’s political action work was built for exactly that morning, which made the gala’s timing its own argument: the ballroom on Friday, the ballot on Tuesday.
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