When I met my husband, he lived around the corner from the Black Muslim Bakery.
Once, on my way to his apartment, I thought it would be nice to pick up a loaf of fresh bread.
The sign said, “OPEN,” but when I walked in, there were a a dozen hijabis sitting on the floor, and I did not get the sense that anyone was particularly interested in conducting bread-related commerce—so I excused myself politely and left immediately.
If an 18-year-old visiting from Santa Cruz could tell that the Black Muslim Bakery was involved in a bit more than baking, you’d think it would be obvious to someone like Barbara Lee.
Mayor Barbara Lee’s office wrote a letter calling Your Black Muslim Bakery a “historical landmark business” and asked a federal agency to give it more time to pay its taxes.
Two days after her staff met with the bakery’s leadership, Oakland journalist Chauncey Bailey was executed on the orders of bakery leader Yusef Bey IV while investigating the organization.
Lee’s office later admitted the letter was a “huge error in judgment.”
This is the judgment Oakland has been stuck with.