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” thanks to its profusion of mansions and wealthy residents. It was a desirable place to live.
But this family was Black, and Piedmont, like many California cities in the 1920s, used racial covenants, redlining, and even violence to exclude non-whites.
Upon moving into the two-story house on Wildwood Avenue, just half a block from Oakland’s city limit, Sidney Dearing, his wife Iréne, and their two children were immediately subjected to a campaign of vicious harassment…