Piedmont’s first Black home owners were forced out by fraud, new lawsuit alleges

Simply over 100 years in the past, a rich West Oakland household bought a house in Piedmont. Carved out of downtown Oakland by just a few hundred voters who did not need to be annexed by the rising East Bay metropolis, the small East Bay enclave had already earned the nickname “metropolis of millionaires” because of its abundance of mansions and rich residents. It was a preferred place to stay.

However this household was black, and Piedmont, like many different California cities within the Nineteen Twenties, used racial compacts, redlining, and even violence to exclude nonwhites.

When Sidney Dearing, his spouse Iréne, and their two kids entered the two-story home on Wildwood Avenue, simply half a block from the Oakland metropolis limits, they have been instantly subjected to a marketing campaign of brutal intimidation.

In Might 1924, 4 months after arrival, a gang of 500 menacing residents of Piedmont surrounded Dearing’s residence and threatened to riot until the household promised to promote to a white household and depart, in response to experiences within the Oakland Tribune.

After Sidney Dearing refused, unknown assailants dedicated a drive-by shootingthroughout which the home and the vehicles parked in entrance of the door have been hit with a hail of bullets. Different random horrors turned frequent. Stones were thrown by way of the home windows. Letters from the KKK, whose membership rolls have been rising within the Bay Space, the Dearings threatened to hold up no matter whether or not they offered or not.

Then got here one series of bombing attempts. Dynamite was positioned close to the home, sufficient to blow it into splinters. The bombs were discovered earlier than anybody died, however the city of Piedmont quickly formally joined the mob’s try to drive out the Dearings.

Piedmont officers claimed they wished to purchase the home to construct a brand new avenue connecting Wildwood to Fairview Avenue, simply north. By condemning the home, the town was capable of seize and demolish it, making room for the brand new avenue. Town has taken steps to implement the plan in courtroom.

A 1924 Oakland Tribune report quoted then-Piedmont Mayor Oliver Ellsworth as saying that condemning the Dearing residence to construct the highway was “for the betterment of the town and to permit the Negro to maneuver out of Piedmont.”

The Dearings resisted, however finally gave in. First, Iréne and the youngsters escaped and moved again to Oakland. Finally, Sidney determined to promote his home to Piedmont, however solely after the town initiated a condemnation.

The highway was by no means constructed.

Now a descendant of the Dearings has filed court case towards the town, claiming that “the true function of the town’s condemnation motion was to expel Dearing and his household from Piedmont as a result of they have been black individuals.”

Jordana Ackerman, Sidney Dearing’s great-granddaughter, filed the lawsuit in Alameda County Superior Court docket on Feb. 2, accusing the town of fraud when it falsely claimed it was condemning Dearing’s residence to have a highway constructed, forcing the household to promote. Ackerman is represented by Legal Defense Funda nonprofit civil rights legislation agency based in 1940 and previously affiliated with the NAACP.

Ackerman’s lawsuit additionally alleges the town violated the California Structure equal protection clause when it denied the Dearings their proper to stay in and revel in their residence and profit from its appreciation, entry to good faculties and different municipal providers. The state structure prohibits authorities officers from discriminating towards sure teams, together with on the premise of race, and treating them otherwise and unfairly.

“The taking of land from Black individuals by way of authorities motion, the violence that usually accompanies these land thefts, and the harm that outcomes from them, have an extended and shameful document in the USA, together with in Piedmont, California,” Leah Aden, a senior advisor on the NAACP Authorized Protection Fund, stated in an announcement.

Ackerman and different members of the Dearing household have been unavailable for remark, a spokesperson for the Authorized Protection Fund informed The Oaklandside.

A spokesperson for the town of Piedmont, Echa Schneider, stated the town has not but been served with the lawsuit, however that the town will make an announcement if that modifications.

Piedmont has taken some steps to reckon with its previous

The Dearing’s story was by no means a secret. It was coated extensively in the press when it occurred. However with the passage of time, some have forgotten it.

In 2020, as racial justice protests swept the nation following the police killing of George Floyd, some Piedmont residents started to dig into the town’s ugly episode.

Piedmont resident Meghan Bennett finally created one website about the story of the Dearing family and the function some Piedmont metropolis officers allegedly performed within the violent expulsion.

A type of officers was Piedmont Police Chief Burton Becker and a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Becker wasn’t interested in defending the Dearings from gangs and attackers wielding bombs and rocks.

Becker turned Alameda County sheriff in 1926, partly by capitalizing on the Klan’s rising affect in Northern California, and by concentrating on the incumbent sheriff’s ties to an unsolved homicide.

Ackerman’s lawsuit alleges that different Piedmont officers performed a key function in defrauding the Dearings. In keeping with the lawsuit, Piedmont Metropolis Legal professional Girard Richardson wrote to the Dearings and provided to pay them 1000’s of {dollars} lower than the home was value. In the event that they refused, he warned them, he would condemn their home by way of the courts to construct the highway the town claimed to comply with.

In keeping with the lawsuit, when the Piedmont Metropolis Council voted to sentence Dearing’s property, the press reported that “the baffling drawback of the Negro residents had been solved.”

In 2022, Piedmont’s leaders started a strategy of “reckoning with our metropolis’s previous as a part of a broader journey towards inclusivity and equality.” Central to the initiative is a proposed memorial to the Dearing household, which can be erected in a small triangular park throughout the road from the home. The Dearing home nonetheless stands and appears because it did in 1924, occupied by a household that was unaware of its history once they purchased it.

The municipal council and the Park Fee have joined famous Oakland panorama architect Walter Hood to design the monument. He envisions a “portal” by way of which guests can search for by way of a window and see a mailbox with the Dearing’s identify on it, a window into an alternate timeline.

He has spoken of the hope that the monument will assist individuals “perceive the trials and tribulations of this household who weren’t allowed to stay within the panorama of Piedmont.”

Schneider, the town spokesman, stated the Metropolis Council permitted a $400,000 contract for the monument’s last design and fabrication at a gathering final month.

In keeping with Ackerman’s lawsuit, it wasn’t till the Nineteen Fifties or Nineteen Sixties that one other black particular person may personal property in Piedmont.

Right now, in response to the US Censuslower than 1% of Piedmont’s 10,800 inhabitants are black.

“These pressured evictions have to be acknowledged and redressed, and Piedmont has the authority and sources to take action,” stated Protection Fund lawyer Aden.