Southern California beachfront property that was taken from a Black couple through eminent domain a century ago and returned to their heirs last year will be sold back to Los Angeles County for nearly $20 million, officials said Tuesday.
The heirs’ decision to sell what was once known as Bruce’s Beach, a portion of what is now Manhattan Beach, was announced by Janice Hahn, chair of the county Board of Supervisors, and state Senator Steven Bradford, who led local and state government efforts to undo the injustice.
“This fight has always been about what is best for the Bruce family, and they feel what is best for them is selling this property back to the County for nearly $20 million and finally rebuilding the generational wealth they were denied for nearly a century,” Hahn said in a written statement.
“This is what reparations look like and it is a model that I hope governments across the country will follow.”
Bradford, who authored the state legislation that enabled the land’s return, said he supported the heirs’ decision to sell it to the county because current zoning regulations would prevent them from developing it in an economically beneficial manner.
The land in the city of Manhattan Beach was purchased in 1912 by Willa and Charles Bruce, entrepreneurs who had migrated to California from across the country and owned two plots of oceanfront property in the area. They built and opened Bruce’s Beach as a small resort for Black residents on the south shore of Santa Monica Bay. Bruce’s Beach was among the first oceanfront properties in the area that was Black-owned and served the Black community, as “60 Minutes” reported in 2021.
Jae C. Hong / AP
“This was an opportunity for a leisure business to provide services to African Americans who wanted to come to the beach,” Alison Rose Jefferson, a historian whose research focused on the history of Black Americans in California beach towns, told “60 Minutes” at the time.
“They would be less harassed in this area because there was this African American business that could provide them with, you know, something to drink, or a place to change their clothes,” Jefferson said.
The Bruces suffered racist harassment from white neighbors, and in the 1920s, the Manhattan Beach City Council condemned the property and took it through eminent domain. The city did nothing with the property, and it was transferred to the state of California and then to Los Angeles County.
The county built its lifeguard training headquarters on the land, which includes a small parking lot.
Hahn learned about the property’s history and launched the complex process of returning the property, including determining that two great-grandsons of the Bruces are their legal heirs.
Terms of the transfer agreement completed last June called for the property to be leased back to the county for 24 months, with an annual rent of $413,000 plus all operation and maintenance costs, and a possible sale back to the county for nearly $20 million, the estimated value.
Los Angeles County officials gave the deed for the Bruce’s Beach property to Bruce family members during a ceremony held on the land, where the L.A. County Lifeguard Training Center is now located, toward the end of July. It marked the first time that the government made appropriations for land taken from a Black family, CBS Los Angeles reported.
“The seizure of Bruce’s Beach nearly a century ago was an injustice inflicted upon not just Willa and Charles Bruce but generations of their descendants who almost certainly would have been millionaires,” wrote Hahn in this week’s statement.
The property’s original name, Bruce’s Beach, was officially restored by the Manhattan Beach City Council in 2006, with Mayor Mitch Ward, the city’s first and only Black mayor, leading the renaming campaign. A plaque reading “Bruce’s Beach” was then installed on the property.
The City of Manhattan Beach is now working to construct and install an updated plaque that will provide a factually accurate account of the history of Bruce’s Beach, which will be placed at the top of the park, according to CBS Los Angeles.
