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Great-granddaughter of Piedmont’s first Black residents, forced out by ‘terror campaign,’ sues city
The lawsuit alleges Piedmont used false road construction claims to force the Black Dearing family out in 1924, with 500 residents involved in harassment, according to historical reports.
- On Feb. 2, Jordana Ackerman, plaintiff and great-granddaughter of Sidney Dearing, sued Piedmont in Alameda County Superior Court alleging the 1924 condemnation was fraudulent and racially motivated.
- Upon moving into the Wildwood Avenue house, Sidney Dearing and Irène Dearing faced harassment from Piedmont residents, including a mob of 500 demanding they sell, drive-by shootings, KKK threats, and dynamite bombings.
- Then-Piedmont Mayor Oliver Ellsworth told the Oakland Tribune the condemnation was `for the improvement of the city as well as to make the negro move from Piedmont`; Piedmont City Attorney Girard Richardson offered thousands less than the house’s value and threatened state court condemnation.
- The Legal Defense Fund , representing Ackerman, said Piedmont hasn’t yet been served while Piedmont’s reckoning initiative started in 2022 with a Walter Hood-designed memorial and a $400,000 contract approved last month.
- The suit links long-term harm: less than 1% of Piedmont’s 10,800 residents are Black today and Ackerman’s suit notes the Dearing eviction helped produce a long property ownership gap.
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Great-granddaughter of Piedmont’s first Black residents, forced out by ‘terror campaign,’ sues city
Just over 100 years ago, a prosperous West Oakland family bought a home in Piedmont. The small East Bay enclave, carved out of the center of Oakland by a few hundred voters who didn’t want to be annexed by the East Bay’s expanding metropolis, had already garnered the nickname “city of millionaires”
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Leaning Left4Leaning Right0Center4Last UpdatedBias Distribution50% Left, 50% Center
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