State senator introduces bill that will allow Bruce’s Beach land transfer
April 13, 2021
State Sen. Steven Bradford introduced a bill this week that, if it passes, will give L.A. County the authority to return a piece of land in Manhattan Beach to the descendants of the Black couple from whom it was wrongfully taken nearly a century ago.
Senate Bill 796, if put into law, would be the first step in the process to ultimately give back two parcels of prime beachfront property to the Bruce family, whose ancestors ran a successful beach resort for African American people into the early part of the 20th century. Willa and Charles Bruce bought those parcels in 1912 and eventually expanded their property. But Manhattan Beach, in the 1920s, used eminent domain to take the land from them. A larger portion of that land was later turned into a park — now named Bruce’s Beach — and remains city-owned.
L.A. County currently owns the two-parcel stretch of land closest to the water. But that property has changed hands multiple times since Manhattan Beach took it over.
California took ownership of it in the 1950s. Then, in 1995, the state gave the two parcels that once belonged to the Bruce family — as well as other connected strips of beach — to the county.