The Brief
- Nearly a century after Piedmont’s first Black resident was driven from his home through threats, violence and what attorneys now call a fraudulent use of eminent domain, descendants of the family have filed a lawsuit against the city seeking a remedy for the loss of their property and generational wealth.
- The lawsuit was filed Monday in Alameda County Superior Court on behalf of the descendants of Sidney and Irene Dearing by the Legal Defense Fund.
- According to the lawsuit, the family endured a sustained campaign of intimidation, including threats of lynching, cross burnings, brick-throwing and attempted bombings.
PIEDMONT, Calif. – Nearly a century after Piedmont’s first Black resident was driven from his home through threats, violence and what attorneys now call a fraudulent use of eminent domain, descendants of the family have filed a lawsuit against the city seeking a remedy for the loss of their property and generational wealth.
The lawsuit was filed Monday in Alameda County Superior Court on behalf of the descendants of Sidney and Irene Dearing by the Legal Defense Fund, the nation’s first civil rights law firm. The firm was founded in 1940 under the leadership of Thurgood Marshall, who later became the first Black justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Sidney Dearing was a descendant of Native Seminoles, a tribe that was dispersed and migrated across the Gulf of Mexico after the frontier wars. Born in Texas, he later moved to California, where he opened a successful jazz club, the Creole Cafe, on Oakland’s Seventh Street. He married Irene, and the couple had two children.…