L.A. County is set to return California beachfront property, used to build a resort called Bruce’s Beach for African Americans, to descendants of a Black couple that was stripped of their land in the 1920s.
According to KTLA, The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted 5-0 on a motion to finish the transfer of parcels in the plot of land located in the posh city of Manhattan Beach. The former resort is currently the site of L.A. county’s lifeguard training headquarters.
Co-author of the motion, Board chair Holly J. Mitchell, signed the documents which would allow the county to lease back the property to its former owners, Willa and Charles Bruce’s heirs, who were also given the option of purchasing it for millions of dollars.
The transfer reportedly includes an agreement for the property to be leased back to L.A. County for 24 months with an annual rent of $413,000, all operation and maintenance costs, and the county’s right to purchase the land for up to $20 million.
Willa and Charles initially bought the beachfront land in 1912 and built the first West Coast resort for Blacks as beaches were highly segregated at the time. Not only did they endure harsh racist harassment from their white neighbors, but years since they opened their establishment in the 1920s, Manhattan Beach City Council seized the land through eminent domain. After years of lying dormant, the property was transferred to the state of California in 1948.
Decades later, in 1995, the state transferred it to the county with restrictions on transferring it again.
Then, in 2021, Supervisor Janice Hahn began returning the beachfront property to the Bruces’ descendants, which proved to be a challenge at first. Eventually, however, the state Legislature passed a bill removing the restriction on transferring the property. The process was completed in May, and Willa and Charles Bruce’s great-grandsons, Marcus and Derrick Bruce, were declared the legal heirs of the late business owners’ property.
“My great-great-grandparents, Willa and Charles Bruce sacrificed to open a business that gave Black people a place to gather and socialize,” the Bruce family spokesperson Anthony Bruce said in a statement. “Manhattan Beach took it from them because of the color of their skin. It destroyed them financially. It destroyed their chance at the American Dream.”
