Oakland Proclaims Aug. 12 ‘The Jacka Day’; Month of Celebration Continues

Since his death in 2015, The Jacka’s influence has steadily grown.

This year, throughout The Jacka’s birth month of August, friends, family and fans of the late hip-hop artist will celebrate his life and legacy with a series of events, which kicked off last weekend with a boat cruise.

On Saturday, Aug. 10, The Jacka’s family hosts a BBQ and birthday party at Ambrose Park in Bay Point. The following weekend, on Aug. 17, festivities return to Ambrose Park for The Jacka Art in The Park exhibition. And on Saturday, Aug. 31, Oakland’s Hella Positive holds a smoke out in The Jacka’s honor.

“We always celebrated him when he was alive, so I want to continue that,” says Reatha Pitre, the late MC’s mother (who also goes by Mama Jack). The Jacka, who was killed in a shooting on Feb. 2, 2015, would’ve been 47 years old this year.

“I don’t want them to forget him,” says Mama Jack. 

Mama Jack expects the birthday party and art show to be filled with people telling stories about The Jacka while slappin’ his music. As for the smoke out, Mama Jack says, “Everybody knows that he loved to smoke, so that might happen every year now.”

A major addition to this year’s celebration of The Jacka, a centered man who lyrically navigated the Bay Area’s underworld while striving for religious clarity and taking on the name Saheed Akbar, is a proclamation from the City of Oakland that his birthday, Aug. 12, be known as The Jacka Day. 

“There’s a lot of great things happening in terms of memorializing rappers and artists within hip-hop, and renaming streets,” says Seretse Njemanze, director of a forthcoming documentary on the The Jacka’s life. “Him getting a day, it feels like it falls in line with that.”  

Njemanze and co-producers Devin Wessell, Tehan Davis and Tim Slater have been working on the documentary project for nearly a year. They’re set to share a trailer for it in February of 2025, 10 years after The Jacka’s death.

This Saturday, the crew will be at The Jacka’s birthday celebration, and are inviting people to share stories about his life for filmed interviews. The setting of Ambrose Park is intentional.

“The location is historic and extremely important to his story,” Njemanze says, noting that Ambrose Park was one of the first places The Jacka performed as a teen.

Co-producer Tehan Davis says that the overall goal of the documentary is to amplify the sincere impact The Jacka had on the Bay Area and beyond.

“We just want to capture the real,” Davis says, “and broadcast it to the world.”

More information on the forthcoming documentary on The Jacka can be found here.