Great-granddaughter sues Piedmont over alleged race-driven forced eviction

Summary

Sidney Dearing, his wife Iréne and their two children moved into a two-story home on Wildwood Avenue in Piedmont in the early 1920s, according to reporting that has described how Black families were targeted in the city. The account says the family faced a campaign of harassment shortly after arrival, including threats and intimidation by a large mob, and it describes subsequent acts of violence such as a drive-by shooting and bombing attempts.

More than a century after those events, the lawsuit filed by their great-granddaughter, Jordana Ackerman, alleges that the city later joined the effort to push the family out by pursuing a condemnation action framed as a road project. Ackerman’s complaint says Piedmont falsely claimed it was taking the Dearing property to build a street connecting Wildwood Avenue and Fairview Avenue to the north, and it asserts that the “true goal” was to oust Dearing and his family because they were Black.

Ackerman filed the case on Feb. 2 in Alameda County Superior Court, naming the City of Piedmont as the defendant, the lawsuit states. She is represented by the Legal Defense Fund, a nonprofit civil rights law firm founded in 1940 that was formerly affiliated with the NAACP, according to the reporting.

The lawsuit’s fraud allegations focus on how the city pursued the condemnation, and it also disputes Piedmont’s public justification for the taking. Reporting in the cluster says that, in 1924, then-Piedmont Mayor Oliver Ellsworth was quoted describing the condemnation as both for “improvement of the city” and to make “the negro move from Piedmont,” a characterization Ackerman’s complaint says reflects a discriminatory purpose.

In addition to the fraud claim, the lawsuit alleges Piedmont violated the California Constitution’s equal protection clause. Ackerman’s complaint argues the city treated the Dearings differently and unfairly and denied them the right to live in and enjoy their home and to benefit from its appreciation value, access to good schools, and other municipal services—claims tied to the state constitution’s restrictions on discrimination by government officials.

Leah Aden, a senior counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, said in a statement that “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.” Aden’s remarks were included as part of the response accompanying the filing.

A spokesperson for the city of Piedmont, Echa Schneider, said the city had not yet been served with the lawsuit at the time of the report and would follow up with a statement if that changed. The Legal Defense Fund’s spokesperson also said Ackerman and other members of the Dearing family were not available for comment.

The reporting also describes how the Dearings’ story resurfaced more recently, with residents revisiting the episode during the 2020 period of racial justice protests following the police murder of George Floyd. It says a local resident created a website chronicling the family’s story and the role some Piedmont officials reportedly played in the expulsion.

The cluster further describes Piedmont leaders’ later efforts to “reckon” with the city’s past and includes discussion of a proposed memorial honoring the Dearing family. It says Piedmont leaders have engaged landscape architect Walter Hood to design the memorial and that the city council approved a $400,000 contract for final design and fabrication of the memorial at a meeting “last month,” according to the reporting.