Photo Courtesy of Twitter (@CountyofLA)
On Wednesday, Los Angeles County officials returned the beachfront property previously owned by Black couple Willa and Charles Bruce to their legal heirs.
A deed presented by L.A. County registrar-recorder and county clerk Dean Logan certified that a portion of the Manhattan Beach property belonged to the Descendants of the Bruce family.
“Thank you so much,” Anthony Bruce, a great-great-grandson of Willa and Charles Bruce, said at Wednesday’s beach ceremony, according to ABC 7. “Without God, we would not be here today. And finally, most importantly, thank you all. God bless.”
During the Great Migration, the Bruce family migrated west for a piece of the opportunities America promised. Willa bought two lots of land on Manhattan Beach, which Charles and Willa transformed into a beach resort that welcomed Black people who desired to enjoy the beach. The property became known as “Bruce’s Beach.”
Of course, white people became threatened by the Black-owned resort’s success and petitioned Bruce’s beach to be seized by the city and transformed into a park in 1924. The City council also implemented new laws that prohibited any resort-type businesses in the area, preventing the Bruce family from rebuilding their resort. After demolishing the resort, the lot remained empty, and no park was built directly on the property. In 1956, the city built a park behind the property.
“My family declared that this was sacred land, and I was going to do everything I could to get it back,” Chief Duane “Yellowfeather” Shepard, a relative of Willa and Charles Bruce, said at the ceremony.
In April 2021, the objective to return the ownership to the Bruce family’s descendants was introduced by L.A. County Supervisors Janice Hahn and Holly Mitchell. Senator Steven Bradford penned a new law, Senate Bill 796, that authorized the return of the beachfront property to the Bruce family’s legal heirs, and Governor Gavin Newsom signed the bill on Sept. 30, 2021. The Board of Supervisors approved it on June 28, 2022.
“Today, we are sending a message to every government in this nation confronted with this same challenge,” Supervisor Hahn said. “This work is no longer unprecedented.”
The agreement entailed that the county would lease a lifeguard station on the property from the family for $400,000 a year and, down the road, the family would be eligible to receive $20 million when they decide to sell it.