Latest news with #redlining
CBS News
3 days ago
- CBS News
100 years after 1st Black family in Piedmont, California was driven out, memorial moves forward
A memorial sculpture park honoring the first Black family to own a home in the city of Piedmont is once again gaining momentum, with Oakland artist and landscape architect Walter Hood ready to bring his design to life. "We are interested in people, how people remember and how that becomes part of their future," said Hood. This past week, the city of Piedmont announced a new a timeline and confirmed the target date for the project. "We are intending in the next 12 months to complete the design for the project and proceed with its installation," said Rosanna Bayon-Moore, City Administrator of Piedmont, "At this time, the city is at the 50-percent concept stage." The genesis of the project reaches back five years ago in 2020 during COVID, when residents who had a lot of time on their hands, uncovered the history of a dark time in their beloved city, even setting up a website documenting the city's dark past. In January of 1924, Sidney Dearing and his wife Irene became the first Black family to become homeowners in Piedmont, with help of Irene's mother who purchased the home on Wildwood and Fairview Avenues, during a time when many communities were redlining people of color to prevent them from living in certain neighborhoods. Sydney Dearing and his wife, Irene, who moved to Piedmont, California in Jan. 1924 and became the community's first Black residents. CBS Newspaper articles show the city council and residents wanted the Dearing family out, and when they refused, the town became angry. The Dearing home became a target for violence, including an unexploded bomb made of dynamite that was found in the garden. In May of 1924, a mob of 500 people surrounded the home. Eventually, the Dearing family, for their own safety, sold the home back to the city of Piedmont. Gary Theut has lived in the Dearing House with his family for almost 20 years, and did not know about the home's history when he first bought it, but said he looks forward to the memorial that will be built in a triangle-shaped redwood grove that sits in front of the house. "I think, although the history is ugly, I think it is really important that we honor those people who went through it," said Theut. "And I'm glad we know about it now, and that the community is aware." The Piedmont City Council first gave the green light to the memorial in 2022, looking to right a wrong that happened in their town. "We are committed to being a different community today, and being a different community means facing difficult topics," said Bayon-Moore. "It means confronting difficult chapters in our history. It means having a difficult conversation to be able to move forward. The city chose Hood to lead the conversation. His work can be viewed around the world, around the country and in the Bay Area, including the gardens at the De Young Museum, the Bow along the Embarcadero, and Panorama Park on Yerba Buena Island. Hood said he wanted to work on the Dearing family project because it was personal. "I'm a Black man, it is just that simple," said Hood. "I think if we don't tell our stories, someone else will." In his original design, Dearing's story will be told through two portals that visitors sit inside, and through a mirror can look out two windows. "These are metaphorical for the couple who never had a chance to dwell here in Piedmont," said Hood. "And the last piece is up high on a flagpole is an oversized mailbox that has the Dearing name on the side, the flag is up, meaning that they have mail." Recently, Hood finished the garden at the International African American Museum in South Carolina. Although the two projects are different in scale, he believes all the stories are connected. "Charleston prides itself on its history as the oldest city in the country, and they lost the site where 45% of the African slave diaspora landed there and was sold," said Hood. "And so, if a place like that steeped in history can forget something that consequential to the making of America, little Piedmont, this little story, it is easy to be swept under."
Reuters
12-06-2025
- Business
- Reuters
US court blocks CFPB move to scrap racial discrimination settlement
June 12 (Reuters) - A federal judge in Chicago on Thursday refused to allow the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to vacate a racial discrimination settlement reached last year with a mortgage lender, finding there was no basis for granting an extraordinary request. The decision marked a setback after senior Trump administration officials claimed in March they were seeking redress for a company, Townstone Financial, that they said had been baselessly "persecuted" without evidence. Representatives for the agency and Townstone, which jointly filed the motion with the CFPB, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The CFPB originally brought the case in 2020 during Donald Trump's first presidency, accusing Townstone of "redlining" by discouraging would-be Black home buyers from applying for mortgages through derogatory and disparaging comments in promotional materials. U.S. District Judge Franklin Valderrama cast doubt on CFPB claims that there had been no evidence underlying the CFPB's original case. Reversing a prior CFPB action in this way, he said, amounted to "an act of legal hara-kiri that would make a samurai blush." "At bottom, to grant the motion based on the arguments advanced by the parties would be to undermine the finality of judgments," Valderrama said. "That is a Pandora's box the court refuses to open."
BBC News
02-06-2025
- Business
- BBC News
Tulsa plans $105m in reparations for America's 'hidden' massacre
"The Tulsa Race Massacre has been a stain on our city's history... hidden from history books," Nichols said. That tragedy, he said, was compounded by economic harms that followed, namely the building of a highway "to choke off economic vitality", "perpetual underinvestment" and "intentional acts of redlining", where black people were denied home and property loans. "Now it's time to take the next big steps to restore," Nichols said. The plan is called Road to Repair and its funds will be managed by the Greenwood Trust. It seeks to have $105m in assets either secured or committed by 1 June, some of which would also go into a legacy fund for the trust to acquire and develop land. Nichols said the proposal would not require city council approval. The council would, however, authorise the transfer of any city property to the trust, which he said was very likely. The Greenwood Trust borrows its name from Tulsa's Greenwood District, a once-prosperous black neighbourhood with an economy so thriving that it was dubbed Black Wall Street. That all changed in May 1921, when a white mob burned it to the ground, destroying more than 1,000 homes and structures in less than 24 hours. An estimated 300 black residents were killed and many more injured. The event "robbed Tulsa of an economic future that would have rivalled anywhere else in the world", Nichols said in a phone interview. For decades the story of the massacre was largely erased from history, but it was thrust into the spotlight in 2020 when then-President Donald Trump announced he would hold an election rally in Tulsa on 19 June, or Juneteenth, the day commemorating the end of slavery. He rescheduled the rally and his successor, Joe Biden, declared Juneteenth a national holiday. The Tulsa reparations will be made as Trump, now back in the White House, is ending diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) practices in the US government and many major companies are abandoning or reducing their diversity initiatives. Tulsa's package is also the first large-scale plan that commits funds to addressing the impact of a specific racially motivated attack. Evanston, Illinois, just outside of Chicago, became the first city to make reparations available to its black residents in 2021, by offering qualified households money for expenses such as home repairs and down payments. Americans have long been divided over directly addressing past acts of racism, such as slavery, through paying reparations. In May, Maryland Governor Wes Moore - the state's first black governor - said he would veto a measure to create a commission for studying reparations in his state. Meanwhile, California last year apologised for past discrimination against black Americans and approved some reparations initiatives, but did not offer direct financial payments. The last two known survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre, Lessie Benningfield Randle and Viola Ford Fletcher, lost a long court battle seeking reparations last summer.
