Great-granddaughter of Piedmont’s first Black residents, forced out by ‘terror campaign,’ sues city

Upon moving into the two-story house on Wildwood Avenue, just half a block from Oakland’s city limit, Sidney Dearing, his wife Iréne, and their two children were immediately subjected to a campaign of vicious harassment.

In May 1924, four months after arriving, a mob of 500 menacing Piedmont residents surrounded the Dearing home and threatened to riot unless the family pledged to sell to a white family and leave, according to reports in the Oakland Tribune.

After Sidney Dearing refused, unidentified assailants committed a drive-by shooting, striking the house and cars parked in the front with a fusillade of bullets. Other random terrors became common. Bricks were thrown through the windows. Letters from the KKK, whose membership roles were surging in the Bay Area at the time, threatened to hang the Dearings whether they sold or not.

Then came a series of bombing attempts. Dynamite was placed near the home, enough to blow it to splinters. The bombs were discovered before anyone died, but the city of Piedmont soon officially joined the mob effort to push out the Dearings.

Piedmont officials claimed they wanted to purchase the house in order to build a new street connecting Wildwood to Fairview Avenue just to the north. By condemning the house, the city could seize and demolish it, making room for the new street. The city took steps to move ahead with the plan in state court.

A 1924 Oakland Tribune report quoted then-Piedmont Mayor Oliver Ellsworth saying that condemning the Dearing’s home to build the road was “for the improvement of the city as well as to make the negro move from Piedmont.”

The Dearings resisted but ultimately gave in. First, Iréne and the children escaped, moving back to Oakland. Finally, Sidney decided to sell his home to Piedmont, but only after the city had initiated a condemnation.

The road was never built.

Now a descendant of the Dearings has filed a lawsuit against the city, alleging that “the true goal of the city’s condemnation action was to oust Dearing and his family from Piedmont because they were Black people.”

Jordana Ackerman, the great-granddaughter of Sidney Dearing, filed the lawsuit in Alameda County Superior Court on Feb. 2, accusing the city of fraud when it falsely claimed it was condemning the Dearing home to build a road, requiring the family to sell. Ackerman is represented by Legal Defense Fund, a nonprofit civil rights law firm founded in 1940 that was formerly affiliated with the NAACP.

Ackerman’s lawsuit also alleges the city violated the California Constitution’s equal protection clause when it denied the Dearings their right to live in and enjoy their home and benefit from its appreciation in value, access to good schools, and other municipal services. The state constitution prohibits government officials from discriminating against certain groups, including on the basis of race, and treating them differently and unfairly.

“The taking of land from Black people through government action, the violence that has often accompanied these land thefts, and the harms that flow from it, have a long and shameful record in the United States, including in Piedmont, California,” Leah Aden, a senior counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, said in a statement.

Ackerman and other members of the Dearing family were not available for comment, a spokesperson for the Legal Defense Fund told The Oaklandside.

A spokesperson for the city of Piedmont, Echa Schneider, said the city hasn’t yet been served with the lawsuit, but that the city would follow up with a statement if that changes.

Piedmont has taken some steps to reckon with its past

The Dearing’s story was never a secret. It was covered extensively in the press when it happened. But the passage of time caused some to forget.

In 2020, as racial justice protests were sweeping the country following the police murder of George Floyd, some Piedmont residents started digging into the city’s ugly episode.

Piedmont resident Meghan Bennett ended up creating a website about the Dearing family’s story and the role some Piedmont city officials reportedly played in the forceful expulsion.

One of those officials was Burton Becker, Piedmont’s police chief and a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Becker wasn’t interested in defending the Dearings from mobs and assailants wielding bombs and bricks.

Becker went on to become Alameda County’s sheriff in 1926, in part by capitalizing on the Klan’s rising influence in Northern California, and by hammering away at the incumbent sheriff’s links to an unsolved murder.

Ackerman’s lawsuit alleges that other Piedmont officials played key roles in defrauding the Dearings. Piedmont City Attorney Girard Richardson, according to the lawsuit, wrote the Dearings and offered to pay them thousands of dollars less than the home was worth. If they refused, he warned them, he would proceed to condemn their home through the courts to build the road the city claimed to be pursuing.

According to the lawsuit, when Piedmont’s City Council voted to condemn Dearing’s property, the press reported that “the perplexing negro resident problem had been solved.”

In 2022, Piedmont leaders started a process of “reckoning with our city’s past as part of a broader journey toward inclusion and equity.” At the center of the initiative is a proposed memorial to the Dearing family, which will be erected in a small triangular park across the street from the home. The Dearing home still stands, looking much as it did in 1924, occupied by a family who were unaware of its history when they bought it.

The City Council and Park Commission have engaged famed Oakland landscape architect Walter Hood to design the memorial. He envisions a “portal” through which visitors can peer up through a window and see a mailbox with the Dearing’s name on it, a window to an alternate timeline.

He’s spoken about hoping that the memorial will help people understand “the trials and tribulations of this family who were not allowed to live in the Piedmont landscape.”

Schneider, the city spokesperson, said the council approved a $400,000 contract for final design and fabrication of the memorial at a meeting last month.

According to Ackerman’s lawsuit, it wasn’t until the 1950s or 1960s that another Black person was able to own property in Piedmont.

Today, according to the U.S. Census, less than 1% of Piedmont’s 10,800 residents are Black.

“These forcible expulsions must be acknowledged and repaired, and Piedmont has the authority and resources to do so,” said Aden, the defense fund attorney.

This story was originally published by The Oaklandside and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.