Sylvester Hodges, who died last week, was a parent activist and lifelong civil rights leader who became President of the Oakland School board and led the fight to stop the state from taking over the school district and its financial resources.

Besides serving on the Oakland Board of Education for 12 years, Hodges served as chair of the Paul Robeson Centennial Committee, working successfully to rename the school district administration building in Robeson’s memory.

Geoffrey Pete, the owner of Geoffrey’s Inner Circle (later Planet Soule) and a co-founder of both the Oakland Black Caucus and Niagara Movement Democratic Club, said of Hodges, “He was the most influential individual in terms of integrating the economic landscape in Oakland”

A major contribution was his successful strategy to prevent the takeover of the Oakland school district by the State of California in 1988.

While a powerful array of state politicians pressured the board to accept a $10 million loan which would have placed Oakland under the fiscal control of the state for 30 years, Hodges and his school board colleague Darlene Lawson argued that the takeover attempt seemed to be “ a power trip for the downtown business interests, who are mostly white.”

Soon after Hodges retired from the board, the district went into significant debt and was taken over by the State of California in 2003.