Creating a Historical Plaque
for Sidney Dearing in Dearing Park, on Wildwood Avenue / Nova Drive
Location
Dearing Park across the street from his previous house (#103).
Sample historical plaque
Samples from sewahstudios.com
And all of the current historical plaques in Piedmont (here).
Cost
The internet gives a wide range of costs for a plaque: "The cost can be as much as $5,430 (plus installation costs) or as little as $410 for a standard State or National Register of Historic Places plaque."
Pushback against a plaque
Letter Vice Mayor Tim Rood received in 2021:
Feb. 19, 2021
Dear Vice Mayor Tim Rood,
I wish to urge you to get us out of the racism hole you are digging for us current Piedmonters. I oppose any city apology and monument commemorating the awful treatment of Sidney Dearing, in 1924. My grandkids now in Piedmont Schools were not implicated in that. And neither were you. Acknowledge it, sure, and move on.
Please stop applying collective guilt and "while guilt" and turning over every rock in current city government with the magnifying lens of anti-racism. You should be bringing us together and providing constructive paths to assisting the less fortunate, but not with the lens of race. That is divisive.
Good luck.
The author isn't hard to figure out, they're of a grandparents age with multiple kids in the Piedmont School system. Being a multigenerational child of Piedmont myself there are only a few sets of grandparents with multiple kids in the school system. To protect her grandkids, I wont post her name here.
The "racism hole" in Piedmont did just get dug by Tim and didn't end with Sidney Dearing and family as we have seen with current racist events still happening here in Piedmont.
Mayor Teddy Gray King and the City of Piedmont recognizes Sidney Dearing on April 18, 2022.