![]() ![]() Manhattan Beach developed into one of the wealthiest, and whitest, coastal communities in the state. Anthony Bruce believes she ended up working as a dishwasher. One local paper, which referred to Black landowners as a “menace,” praised the seizure, writing at the time that Black residents “depreciated property values to a considerable extent and many sales were lost on this account.”Ĭharles Bruce died in 1931. Willa and Charles Bruce surrendered their property in 1927 and spent years fighting the condemnation in court before settling for a $14,500 sale price, or the equivalent of around $254,000 in today’s dollars. Officials said that the city needed the land for a park, but the Black landowners said the seizure was motivated by racial animus. In 1924, the city of Manhattan Beach decided to use eminent domain powers to condemn and seize the Bruce property - and those of other Black families. Certain citizens objected to a colored settlement.” A local newspaper article from 1928, cited in the report, said that “dynamite, bullets and the secret torch are all alleged to have been employed by residents in order to induce the (N)egroes to travel. The early version of the resort consisted of a small portable cottage with a food stand out front.Īs the Bruces’ business thrived and other African American families began purchasing property nearby, some of their white neighbors started complaining about a “Negro invasion,” according to Alison Rose Jefferson, a historian who wrote about the Bruces and other Black families in her book, “Living the California Dream: African American Leisure Sites During the Jim Crow Era.”įires and cross burnings on Black-owned properties in Manhattan Beach were investigated, according to a report commissioned by the city of Manhattan Beach in 2021. Willa and Charles Bruce built a small resort, one of the few oceanside establishments where Black people could eat, dance and swim. Eight years later, she purchased another lot. In 1912, Willa Bruce purchased Lot 8 in Block 5 for $1,225 in Manhattan Beach, a coastal town in the center of a pristine curved shoreline, with the Santa Monica mountains rising in the distance. “This was something that was stolen from us.”īruce’s Beach was now part of a national narrative about what is owed to Black people in America for past injustice - and what Black people owe to one another in the larger quest for reparations.īut it was also one family’s real estate transaction. “You know, I don’t believe they would say yes, this is reparations for our family, because this is something that we already had,” Anthony Bruce said of his great-great grandparents. The Bruce family has grappled with whether the return of the land was truly reparations. ![]() And many of us were heartened by this rare public example of government doing right by Black folk.” “It was the quintessential example, to my mind, at least, of how reparations should work. “Say it ain’t so,” Tavis Smiley said on his radio show. The Bruces’ decision to sell has stirred fresh debate about the goals and methods of reparations, just as those efforts have been gaining traction at universities and local governments.Īctivists who had helped the Bruces secure the land, and other observers, were disappointed that the family decided not to hold onto it and try to reclaim the vision of their ancestors. Then, in January, the heirs to Bruce’s Beach announced that they were selling the land back to Los Angeles County for $20 million. The political will spurred by racial justice activists energized by the momentum for social justice after the murder of George Floyd. The stars had to align perfectly: There were thousands of lawyers’ hours. government entity, and a model for how attempts might work to compensate Black Americans for centuries of economic oppression and enslavement. The return of the land, known as Bruce’s Beach, was held up as a first of its kind in reparations from a U.S. Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York Times ![]()
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