SAN FRANCISCO (CN) — A descendant of one of the first Black homeowners in Piedmont, California, filed a lawsuit Monday, claiming her great-grandfather endured racial discrimination and was forced to sell his home through intimidation, terror and fraud by the Bay Area city.
Sidney Dearing, a Black man, bought his home in January 1924 on Wildwood Avenue in Piedmont, a small Oakland Hills community, for his wife and two children. Dearing was the owner of the jazz club Creole Café in West Oakland.
The plaintiff, Dearing’s great-granddaughter Jordana Ackerman, states in the complaint filed in the Superior Court of Alameda County that during the 1920s, Piedmont “prided itself on being an exclusive enclave of white professionals and business executives, with no Black residents and few foreign-born residents” and was a “probable” sundown town…