State, LA County effort underway to return Bruce’s Beach land to descendants of original Black owners
April 09, 2021
State and Los Angeles County officials will soon undertake an effort that, if successful, would return a strip of prime Manhattan Beach real estate to the descendants of the original Black property owners, who missed a chance to build generational wealth when city leaders in the 1920s took the land from them.
Returning the land, officials and descendants of those owners say, would help rectify a historical wrong. In the early part of the 20th century, Willa and Charles Bruce opened the first seaside resort on the West Coast specifically for Black people, at a time when segregation often limited the access African Americans had to the surf. Bruce’s Beach, as the resort was called, was successful and, over the years, grew in size.
But city leaders used eminent domain to strip the couple of the land — as well as property belonging to several other Black families — in a move that, the historical record shows, had racist motivations. The Manhattan Beach City Council formally acknowledged as much, and condemned those actions, this week.