A Wall, a War Vet and a Fight for Land: One Family’s 50-Year Battle in Livermore

Tashenia Pearson’s street in Livermore looks like a postcard for the California suburban dream — wide driveways, manicured lawns, flags fluttering in the breeze. Evergreen trees lean over fences and neighborhood kids splash in backyard pools year-round.

But for Pearson, the tranquility is a facade.

“I feel like I’m in the 1920s in Mississippi,” she said one warm afternoon in March as she sat on her front patio under the shade of a wooden pergola. “Not California in 2025.”

She pointed to a 6-foot wall of cement blocks that runs along the side of her property, dividing her home from the neighbors next door. The gray wall leans to the side. Behind it sits more than 700 square feet of land she owns but has never been allowed to use.

Pearson pays property taxes on the land she’s been fighting to reclaim for the past five years.

The wall on Pearson’s lot is part of a bigger story — and a long history — of exclusion, belonging and repair. In the Bay Area and America, owning land is a foundation for wealth and mobility.

As the first state to establish both a reparations task force and a truth and healing council for Indigenous residents, California is grappling with its legacy of racist land seizures — a reckoning reflected in settlements like Section 14 in Palm Springs, Bruce’s Beach in Manhattan Beach, and recent land returns to tribes like the Coast Miwok in Marin. In Livermore, a wealthy city built on unceded Ohlone land that once excluded Black families, the history of land dispossession is playing out in a suburban backyard dispute.

This story begins in 1971, when Lacerial and Opaline Pearson bought the four-bedroom, mid-century ranch-style home.

Lacerial, an Alabama native, served two decades in the U.S. Army and fought in the Korean War. After an honorable discharge, he and Opaline moved to Stockton in the late 1960s. Lacerial took a job driving a mail truck for the United States Postal Service in Oakland.

It was a boom time in Livermore, with neighborhoods sprouting across former farmland and construction reshaping the once-sleepy suburb. The expansion of Interstate 580 turned the rural town into a destination for families. Developers such as H.C. Elliott advertised full-sized lots in desirable neighborhoods.

Lacerial wanted a shorter commute and Opaline, who was raised in Oklahoma, desired fruit trees and a pool. Using a Department of Veterans Affairs loan, they became the first Black family in the subdivision.

But when the Pearsons moved in, they discovered a wall had been built just a few feet from their house, cutting off nearly a third of their side yard — land they owned — and giving it to the house next door. Their neighbors claimed to have a “recreational easement” over the land.

Easements are typically tools for shared use, according to Eli Moore, a property law and racial exclusion expert at UC Berkeley’s Othering and Belonging Institute.

“Usually, an easement is about allowing limited access — like using someone’s driveway to reach your house or a conservation easement restricting development,” he said.

“Unfortunately, people are very creative with how they perpetuate racism,” said Moore, adding that after the Fair Housing Act passed in 1968, developers and realtors devised covert ways to exclude Black families, like raising prices or steering them to certain neighborhoods.

An easement can allow owners to share their property for recreational use. It generally does not include the right to build on the land or to block the property owner from using it. Pearson unraveled the story of how her family’s land was appropriated through meticulous research and documents she found in her parents’ safe.

Months before the Pearsons arrived in March 1971, the neighboring property — also built by H.C. Elliott — was sold. The sale explicitly included an easement extending 7 feet into what would become the Pearsons’ property.

Yet five months later, when the Pearsons bought their home from H.C. Elliott, their deed made no mention of the easement. In a letter to the Oakland Tribune, Opaline pleaded for help. “We find we are paying taxes on the seven feet which we cannot use,” she wrote. “We were not informed about this easement before we purchased the home.”

She wrote to the VA, saying the wall was not in their deed or in the plans they had reviewed. The VA agreed — it should be removed. H.C. Elliott, the builder, promised it would be.

It wasn’t. H.C. Elliott, now Elliott Homes, Inc., did not respond for comment.

After two years of trying to get the wall removed, Lacerial and Opaline Pearson signed paperwork formalizing the easement and wall agreement with their neighbors — effectively cementing a loss they were forced to accept. The document cites “valuable consideration,” but it’s unclear what, if anything, they received in return — or why they agreed to sign.

Pearson, a toddler at the time, now believes they did it out of resignation, not genuine consent.

“They were from the Jim Crow South,” Pearson, who turns 55 on Tuesday, said of her parents. “They weren’t just going to give away their land. They must’ve felt they had no choice.”

Livermore has a history of racism. In 1968, three years before the Pearsons moved in, residents packed a Livermore City Council meeting to talk about race. According to archived meeting minutes viewed by KQED, Black residents described being told, “We do not rent to Negroes” or “I personally have nothing against Negroes, but the other tenants would not like it.” One speaker said it was widely known in the community that some builders refused to sell to Black families.

Pearson recalled frequently being called the N-word as a child by a boy on her street. She said their Christmas decorations were smashed, bikes were stolen and their house was egged. Opaline, who helped found the first Black church in Livermore, talked constantly about getting their land back — of lazy afternoons with family, lounging in a pool. But the surveyor she hired in the 1980s was denied access.

“I remember the look on my mom’s face — disappointment,” Pearson said.

The wall stood for the rest of her parents’ lives, just three feet from their side window, tilting a little more with each passing decade. Her mother never built the pool.

Opaline passed away in 2003, Lacerial in 2012. Pearson returned from Houston, where she was raising her son, to care for her parents in their final years. Pearson and her brother inherited the property, and in 2019, her brother signed over his share, making her the sole owner. She began remodeling, with thoughts of potentially selling.

During renovations, she looked into removing the wall. By then, the neighbors had installed an outdoor shower against the wall, causing water to flood onto Pearson’s side. The city told her she’d need a surveyor to confirm the property lines. But when she shared her plan to survey the property — and possibly rebuild the wall — her new neighbors, Jenelle and Ryan Watson, refused to let the surveyor onto their property.

In 2021, Pearson filed a civil suit in Alameda County to assert her rights to conduct a survey. Using aerial and underground imaging, the survey ultimately confirmed the property boundaries. Pearson discovered she was paying property taxes and insurance on land that extended far beyond the wall.

A structural evaluation commissioned as part of the civil suit found the wall to be dangerously unstable in 2022. In 2023, an arbitrator in the civil case ruled that the 1973 easement agreement was binding and ordered Pearson and the Watsons to share responsibility for maintaining the wall. The arbitration, however, left unresolved Pearson’s key concerns about the wall’s safety and potential code violations.

Meanwhile, tensions between the neighbors escalated. The Watsons expanded their use of the easement, adding fences, sprinklers and landscaping — actions Pearson contested as unauthorized. Pearson said the Watsons installed floodlights that shone onto her property. The couple accused her of harassment and filed for a restraining order. She filed a counterclaim. A judge granted the Watsons’ in part and denied Pearson’s.

Jenelle Watson, in an email, said she and her husband have used their land in accordance with the exclusive recreational easement that was part of their deed when they purchased the home in 2015.

“This dispute has been about property rights and easement use,” Watson told KQED. “I’ve addressed everything through legal channels. I do not believe race has played any role in this matter.”

Watson said she simply wants to protect her property rights and has followed the legal process, noting that similar easement agreements and exclusive-use provisions exist in other properties within their tract.

Pearson has repeatedly appealed to Livermore officials for inspections and enforcement. In 2022, the city ordered the Watsons to remove a lattice topper they had installed on the wall, as it exceeded height regulations.

In an email, the city of Livermore stated that, while it does not typically inspect private property, city inspectors examined the wall in 2021 and 2022 and found no structural or safety risks. The city stated that, since the California Building Code exempts walls that do not exceed 6 feet, it does not believe it is responsible for requiring a permit or repairing the wall.

As for the original issue of why Lacerial and Opaline’s 1971 deed contained no mention of an easement, the city said grant deeds and easements are out of its purview. “The easement should have been disclosed,” the city said. “We do not know why this did not occur.”

Pearson feels stuck. If she rents her home, she’s worried about liability — what if the wall falls onto her electrical line? If she sells, she can’t imagine a buyer paying full price. She’s racked up debt paying attorney fees throughout the lengthy dispute.

“It’s hurtful to not be treated equally,” she said. “I’m 50-something years old and I’m still dealing with this. It’s embarrassing.”

Recently, a new law firm, Sethi Orchid Minor LLP, took Pearson’s case. Rahul Sethi, who specializes in property law, said it’s one of the most complex easement disputes he’s seen. The reason he wanted to get involved is the history.

“There’s a whole connection to the past,” he said. “I see it as this open sore that just hasn’t been dealt with in 50 years.”

Oshea Orchid, another attorney at the firm, put it more bluntly: “In our view, this is how systemic discrimination just continues on,” she said. What seemed like a small issue in 1971 changed the Pearsons’ lives dramatically, she said.

“Builders, the city — they thought they could get away with this because it’s easier to push around minorities who can’t easily fight back,” she added. “This is how generational wealth is denied.”

Pearson carries on with quiet determination, guided by her parents’ memory and a steadfast belief that justice, however delayed, will come. Inside the home she shares with her 27-year-old son, the walls are lined with her father’s medals from the Korean War. There’s a painted portrait of her mother, commissioned by a local artist, and a photo of Pearson and her brother playing in the backyard as children, next to her son’s framed abstract artwork.

Outside, the wall stands as a symbol of decades of unresolved racial injustice in a city where Black residents have never made up more than 2% of the population. The Pearson family’s story is about more than property lines. It’s about who is heard when they say something was taken from them, and who is told to move on.

“My parents paid for something they never stepped foot on,” she said.

Anya Schultz is an investigative reporter and audio producer based in the Bay Area. She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2023 for her work on the investigative series Stolen: Surviving St. Michael’s.