Black-owned California beachfront seized 100 years ago could be returned to owners’ descendants
April 09, 2021
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Los Angeles County plans to return prime beachfront property to descendants of a Black couple who built a seaside resort for African Americans but suffered racist harassment and were stripped of it by local city leaders a century ago, a county official said Friday.
“It is the county’s intention to return this property,” Janice Hahn, a member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, told a news conference at what was known as Bruce’s Beach in the city of Manhattan Beach.
The decision in Los Angeles County, the nation’s most populous, comes at a time of national reckoning on race and discussions at the local, state and federal levels over reparations.
It comes after multiple property transfers over the decades. Today, a county lifeguard training headquarters building sits on the property along some of the most coveted coastline in Southern California.