Oakland-based artist and designer Walter Hood, his team, and the City of Piedmont are currently finalizing the design for the Sidney and Irene Dearing memorial before its installation in Dearing Park on Wildwood Avenue, across the street from where the family once lived.
The Dearings moved into Piedmont in 1924 and were the first Black homeowners in Piedmont according to City Communications officer Echa Schneider.
According to Schneider, in 2020, Piedmont’s city council released a resolution expressing the intent to work toward making Piedmont a more inclusive and welcoming community by looking at its policies and how staff are trained. Schneider said the council wants to examine its history and take a critical eye and recognize its past, reshaping its values through policies and the physical installation of this memorial.
The project’s total budget for design, fabrication and construction is currently set at $417,000 according to Schneider. There is no publicly announced date for the installation.
The City Park Commission formed a subcommittee with the assistance of a facilitator and selected Dearing Park to be the location of the memorial. The committee met with members of the Dearing family and discussed aspects of their story that the family wants to be displayed.
“[The family and committee] created a set of guiding principles for what a memorial should look like. They wanted something that recognized not just Sidney Dearing, but Sidney and Irene,” Schneider said.
Scheider said that when the story was first coming up, people learned about just Sidney, and Irene’s presence was not given proper awareness. The family expressed that the story of the Dearings life should not be overlooked by their treatment by the Piedmont community.
“They also wanted the memorial to tell the story of the family, their full lives and their accomplishments and not just tell the story of the worst thing that ever happened to them,” Schneider said.
According to the city of Piedmont, the subcommittee and Hood’s design team are working on a design that looks at the site of the house. Hood’s team took influence from the Park’s towering redwood trees and wanted to incorporate them into the project.
Schneider said the city met with members of the neighborhood surrounding Dearing Park, taking into account the features of the park the neighbors value. The biggest aspect of the park the community members cherished were the trees. Through this input and influential attraction by the design team, instead of removing the trees, they are going to be incorporated into the design.
According to a video of Hood’s plan for the project, the design features an almost fully enclosed seating space where visitors are encouraged to look up, where they will see a mirror that reflects into the “Sidney Dearing portal.” This features a reflection of a window towards the trees that reads, “There are Black people in the future.”
Hood said this quote celebrates and supports the future Brown and Black people in the United States.
This story of Sidney and Irene Dearing is told annually by students at Piedmont High school where they present the “History of Piedmont” presentation to students.
“I think Piedmont does a good job right now educating students about things like [Sidney and Irene Dearing] but it is definitely good to have a visual reminder,” said African Affinity Student Union Executive senior Ilias Mueller-Harley.
This year will be Mueller-Harley’s second year participating in the presentation.
Mueller-Harley said he believes this project will help keep the Dearing’s story a constant reminder of Piedmont’s history and how a community can learn from its past.
“It is hard to think of 100 years being recent but history repeats itself, so it is very important to be educated on topics like this to prevent this from happening again,” Mueller-Harley said.
AASU president and junior Hunter Fasteau said that it’s important to consistently retell these stories.
“A lot of African American History is verbal, and it’s not recorded, and that makes it more vulnerable to erasure,” Fasteau said.
