After Sidney Dearing refused, unidentified assailants committed a drive-by shooting<\/a>, striking the house and cars parked in the front with a fusillade of bullets. Other random terrors became common. Bricks were thrown<\/a> through the windows. Letters from the KKK, whose membership roles were surging<\/a> in the Bay Area at the time, threatened to hang the Dearings whether they sold or not.\u00a0<\/p>\n Then came a series of bombing attempts<\/a>. Dynamite was placed near the home, enough to blow it to splinters. The bombs were discovered<\/a> before anyone died, but the city of Piedmont soon officially joined the mob effort to push out the Dearings.\u00a0<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n A 1924 Oakland Tribune report quoted then-Piedmont Mayor Oliver Ellsworth saying that condemning the Dearing\u2019s home to build the road was \u201cfor the improvement of the city as well as to make the negro move from Piedmont.\u201d<\/p>\n The Dearings resisted but ultimately gave in. First, Ir\u00e9ne 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n The road was never built.<\/p>\n Now a descendant of the Dearings has filed a lawsuit<\/a> against the city, alleging that \u201cthe true goal of the city\u2019s condemnation action was to oust Dearing and his family from Piedmont because they were Black people.\u201d<\/p>\n 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>, a nonprofit civil rights law firm founded in 1940 that was formerly affiliated with the NAACP.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ackerman\u2019s lawsuit also alleges the city violated the California Constitution\u2019s equal protection clause<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n \u201cThe 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,\u201d Leah Aden, a senior counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, said in a statement.<\/p>\n Ackerman and other members of the Dearing family were not available for comment, a spokesperson for the Legal Defense Fund told The Oaklandside.<\/p>\n A spokesperson for the city of Piedmont, Echa Schneider, said the city hasn\u2019t yet been served with the lawsuit, but that the city would follow up with a statement if that changes.<\/p>\n The Dearing\u2019s story was never a secret. It was covered extensively in the press<\/a> when it happened. But the passage of time caused some to forget.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s ugly episode.<\/p>\n Piedmont resident Meghan Bennett ended up creating a website about the Dearing family\u2019s story<\/a> and the role some Piedmont city officials reportedly played in the forceful expulsion.<\/p>\n One of those officials was Burton Becker, Piedmont\u2019s police chief and a member of the Ku Klux Klan<\/a>. Becker wasn\u2019t interested<\/a> in defending the Dearings from mobs and assailants wielding bombs and bricks.\u00a0<\/p>\n Becker went on to become Alameda County\u2019s sheriff in 1926, in part by capitalizing on the Klan\u2019s rising influence in Northern California, and by hammering away at the incumbent sheriff\u2019s links to an unsolved murder<\/a>.<\/p>\n Ackerman\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n According to the lawsuit, when Piedmont\u2019s City Council voted to condemn Dearing\u2019s property, the press reported that \u201cthe perplexing negro resident problem had been solved.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2022, Piedmont leaders started a process of \u201creckoning with our city\u2019s past as part of a broader journey toward inclusion and equity.\u201d 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<\/a> when they bought it.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/The_Fresno_Bee_1924_05_31_11-1352x1600.jpg\")
The terrorism the Dearings faced from Piedmont\u2019s virtually all white community was covered extensively in the press in 1924. Credit: Fresno Bee, courtesy of Newspapers.com
\nPiedmont has taken some steps to reckon with its past<\/p>\n