Soon, neighbors organized the 23rd Avenue Bank, the 23rd Avenue Baptist Church (now the Church of Tonga), and the Miller Library. In 1884, California Cotton Mills Company built the most technologically advanced textile plant of that era at a site on 23rd Avenue. More than 500 workers filled 12 shifts a week at the mill.

The Great Depression devastated much of East Oakland's industrial economy. World War II ended the financial crisis but brought another housing crisis to the East Bay. Oakland responded by building large subsidized apartment buildings to house the large influx of workers, many of them African American, who arrived to fill war production jobs at shipyards, canneries and elsewhere.

After the war ended, manufacturing diminished. Prosperity declined throughout the city's older neighborhoods as factory jobs disappeared, and the 23rd Avenue district was no exception. As employment continued to decline through the 1980's, immigration remained constant, and recent immigrants from Asia and Latin America have joined the descendents of earlier African American settlers.