Sidney and Iréne Dearing, along with their two small children, faced lynching and bomb threats after they settled in a “sundown town” in California in 1924.
As the first Black homeowners in Piedmont, a wealthy white suburb of Oakland, they endured a racial terror campaign that included a mob of 500 people showing up on their property. The police chief, who was also a high-ranking member of the Ku Klux Klan, failed to protect them. The city eventually took the Dearings to court, claiming it needed to seize their property to build a road.
Within a year they were forced to sell, and a road was never built.
More than a century later, the city, still majority white and wealthy, is honoring the Dearing family with a memorial park near Wildwood Avenue, where the family previously lived. But that’s not good enough for their great-granddaughter, Jordana Ackerman.
She’s suing the city and is asking for redress, including compensation and a formal apology, according to a Feb. 2 complaint filed by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and Seyfarth Shaw LLP in Alameda County, California, on behalf of Ackerman.
“This lawsuit seeks to right some of the many wrongs and compensate for the hopes and dreams, generational wealth, and opportunities that the City denied my family through lies and violence rooted in racial discrimination,” Ackerman wrote in a press release.
In recent years, some California cities have attempted to rectify past harms toward Black communities and grapple with a history of being a sundown town, which are usually associated with the Deep South. From Bruce’s Beach to Palm Springs and Santa Monica, officials have apologized and provided compensation to some descendants whose families were victims of eminent domain practices. The state and San Francisco have previously created a task force and advisory committee, respectively, to study and develop proposals to provide reparations for descendants of enslaved Americans.
In the case of the Dearings, the “fraudulent” eminent domain action was racially motivated, and it causes ongoing emotional and traumatic harm to the family, said Leah C. Aden, senior counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and co-counsel on the case.
“The home was stolen from the family and has not been passed through the family as a form of generational wealth,” she told Capital B. “This city is a wealthy enclave, and has one of the strongest educational systems. Had this family not been ousted from the community because they’re Black, the family would have benefited from the education that the city provides.”
When Ackerman learned of the memorial project in 2022, she was asked to participate, the complaint says. She had no clue about the history between her family and the city. After doing more research, she sent letters to the city last year to negotiate reparations for her and other descendants.
She alleges the city failed to make any effort, so she sued.
While the city is aware of the lawsuit, it has not been served, a spokesperson told Capital B on Feb. 4. Despite the lawsuit, the city of Piedmont says it is still committed to creating a permanent memorial to ensure the Dearing family’s experience is “never forgotten.” It even commissioned Walter Hood, a Black professor, artist, and architect based in Oakland, to create the design.
“What Sidney and Iréne Dearing experienced 100 years ago was abhorrent, and is a shameful chapter in the community’s history. It does not reflect the values of the community today,” the statement said. “The memorial is an important part of the community’s commitment to honest reckoning with the past as we work together to build a more welcoming, inclusive future.”
Bombs, a mob, and a lie
In 1907, Sidney Dearing migrated from Texas to California, where he opened a store and Creole Café, a jazz club at 1740 7th Street in West Oakland. It was here he met Iréne, who he married in 1920. A year later, Creole Café closed due to alleged alcohol consumption during the Prohibition Era.
On Jan. 1, 1924, the couple moved to Piedmont after Julia Davis, Iréne’s white mother, purchased the property for $10,000 using Sidney’s money. At the time, Piedmont and surrounding areas restricted home ownership to only white people. However, the “specific whites-only restriction in the original deed … expired in 1923 and may not have been in effect at the time the Dearings moved into the property,” the complaint says. It’s unclear if the white residents knew.
They protested, and the city forced the Dearings to sell.
On May 6, a mob of 500 people showed up to their property at 67 Wildwood Ave.
The family received letters from the KKK threatening to lynch them. Bricks were thrown through their windows. Even gunshots were fired at their property. They found at least three bombs planted on their property. “One of the bombs, which was powerful enough to blow up a few city blocks, was found in his neighbor’s garden,” according to research.
The police department failed to investigate. The police chief, Burton Becker, a Klansman, did not protect them. Sidney hired private security, and even Alameda County Sheriff Frank Barnet provided support.
Sidney decided to negotiate to sell his property for $25,000. The city countered with $8,000 and “demanded that he leave town or else threatened that the City would start condemnation proceedings,” the lawsuit said.
By June, the city began the condemnation process. Sidney hired John Drake, president of the NAACP’s Northern Chapter, to represent him. The next month, the city filed an action in Alameda County Superior Court to condemn the property “to build a road between Wildwood Avenue and Fairview Avenue.” The court supported the city’s action to seize the property for public use.
Seven months later, on Jan. 29, 1925, the Dearings agreed to sell their home. Shortly after, the couple divorced, and Sidney moved to Oakland, where he spent the rest of his life until his death. Iréne moved to the borough of Manhattan in New York with her mother and daughters and became a telephone operator.
Sidney passed away at 83 on Oct. 6, 1983. His death certificate says he succumbed to inanition, or starvation. Capital B could not determine when Iréne died.
Three months after the sale, a local newspaper advertised the sale of the property. The road was never built. Piedmont didn’t see its next Black homeowner until the 1950s or 1960s. The consequences of these exclusionary housing practices persist today.
In 2020, then-Piedmont City Council member and professional city planner Tim Rood told a local newspaper that “68% of Piedmont’s total land area, and over 99% of its residential land, is reserved for the most expensive form of housing ever invented – the detached single-family home.”
The zoning laws have created segregated neighborhoods, making Piedmont “one of the top cities in the Bay Area of California in need of zoning reform,” the lawsuit said.
However, just as it was in the 1920s, Black families are less likely to own homes within the Bay Area region, including Alameda County, where Piedmont is.
The East Bay region is heavily Black. Alameda County, however, has the second-lowest rate of Black households in the region, according to research by the Bay Area Equity Atlas. Despite being home to three of the largest cities in the Bay Area — including Oakland — Alameda has nearly 30,000 more Black renters than homeowners. Between 2010 and 2020, this region lost 5,000 Black owner-occupied households, while the number of Black renter households increased slightly.
The city has taken an active role in trying to reckon with its past.
Six years ago, after the death of George Floyd, the Piedmont City Council passed a resolution to fly the Black Lives Matter flag.
“The City of Piedmont acknowledges, apologizes for, and condemns all racially motivated, discriminatory or exclusionary aspects of the City’s history, and deeply regrets the pain or suffering such policies have caused to any person,” the resolution said.
Sometime after, Meghan Bennett, a native who had been researching Black history in Piedmont, made her research public, which led to the city’s recognition of the need to memorialize the Dearing family. By 2022, the city reached out to work with the descendants and stakeholders to start the process.
There is more work to be done, one of Ackerman’s attorneys told Capital B. Arnold Brown II, with Seyfarth Shaw LLP, notes the country can’t turn a blind eye to these acts and seek justice to repair the harm.
“These acts of racial harm, we can see them perpetuated over and over again,” Brown told Capital B. “It’s important to address them. Otherwise they become part of the fabric.”