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 would go on to become the first Black justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. 

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Ruth Dusseault is an investigative reporter and multimedia journalist focused on environment and energy. Her position is supported by the California local news fellowship, a statewide initiative spearheaded by UC Berkeley aimed at supporting local news platforms. While a student at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism (c’23), Ruth developed stories about the social and environmental circumstances of contaminated watersheds around the Great Lakes, Mississippi River and Florida’s Lake Okeechobee. Her thesis explored rights of nature laws in small rural communities. She is a former assistant professor and artist in residence at Georgia Tech’s School of Architecture, and uses photography, film and digital storytelling to report on the engineered systems that undergird modern life.