LOS ANGELES (AP) – Los Angeles County plans to return first-class beachfront properties to the descendants of a black couple who built a beach town for African-Americans but faced racist harassment a century ago and beyond were gutted by local city leaders, a county official said Friday.
“It is the province’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 country, comes at a time of national race reckoning and discussions at the local, state and federal levels about reparations.
It comes after multiple property transfers over the decades. Today, a headquarters headquarters for lifeguard training is located on-site along one of Southern California’s most coveted coastlines.
The property includes two lots purchased in 1912 by Willa and Charles Bruce, who built the first West Coast resort for black people at a time when segregation banned them from many beaches. They built a lodge, cafe, dance hall and caps with bathing suits for rent. Initially it was known as Bruce’s Lodge.
“Bruce’s Beach became a place where black families traveled from far and wide to enjoy the simple fun of a day at the beach,” said Hahn.
It did not take long.
The Bruces and their clients were harassed by white neighbors and the Ku Klux Klan tried to burn it down. Manhattan Beach City Council eventually used an eminent domain to move the land away from the Bruces in the 1920s, ostensibly for use as a park.
“The Bruces’ California dream was stolen from them,” Hahn said. “And this was an injustice done to not only Willa and Charles Bruce, but generations of their descendants who almost certainly would have been millionaires had they kept this property and their successful business.”
After lying unused for years, the land was turned over to the state of California in 1948, and in 1995 it was transferred to Los Angeles County for beach activities and maintenance.
The latest transfer came with restrictions that limit the ability to sell or transfer the property and can only be lifted through a new state law, Hahn said.
State Senator Steven Bradford said he will introduce legislation, SB 796, on Monday that would exempt the country from those restrictions.
“After so many years, we will rectify this injustice,” he said.
If the bill is passed, the transfer to the descendants will need to be approved by the province’s five-member board of supervisors, said Liz Odendahl, Hahn’s director of communications.
Manhattan Beach is now a Tony city of about 35,000 residents on the south coast of Santa Monica Bay. The picturesque pier juts out into swell appreciated by surfers, and luxury homes have replaced many of the beach houses along an oceanfront walk called The Strand. According to Census data, the population is 78% White and 0.5% Black.
The current city council this week formally recognized and condemned the city leaders’ efforts in the early 20th century to expel the Bruces and several other black families, but stopped offering formal apologies, Southern California News Group reported.
“We offer this recognition and condemnation as a fundamental act for the next hundred years of Manhattan Beach,” says a document approved by the board, “and the actions we will take together, to the best of our ability, in action and with words, to reject prejudice and hatred and to promote respect and inclusion. “
A hill that rises steeply behind the beachfront property has a beach parking lot and above it is a city park overlooking the ocean that was renamed Bruce’s Beach in 2006.
The lot and park were not part of the Bruces’ property and would not be part of a transfer to the family, Odendahl said.
The property’s value has not been assessed, she said.
A return of the land could be an option for Bruce’s descendants to rent the land back to the county for further use.