Black couple’s heirs to regain prime beach site
LOS ANGELES — Los Angeles County supervisors have revealed financial details of a plan to return ownership of prime beachfront property to descendants of a Black couple who built a resort for African Americans but were stripped of the land in the 1920s.
The details are contained in a motion before the board on Tuesday that would complete transfer of the site once known as Bruce’s Beach in the city of Manhattan Beach where the county’s lifeguard training headquarters is now located.
The deal includes an agreement 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 the county’s right to purchase the land for up to $20 million.
The land was purchased in 1912 by Willa and Charles Bruce, who built the first West Coast resort for Black people at a time when many beaches were segregated.
They suffered racist harassment from white neighbors and in the 1920s the Manhattan Beach City Council took the land through eminent domain. The city did nothing with the property and it was transferred to the state of California in 1948.
In 1995, the state transferred it to the county, with restrictions on further transfers.
Supervisor Janice Hahn began the complex process of returning the property to heirs of the Bruces in April 2021. A major hurdle was overcome when the state Legislature passed a bill removing the restriction on transfer of the property.
County staff and a legal team representing the Bruce family pro bono spent months hammering out the details and thinking through every possible outcome. They received support from state lawmakers and reparations advocates — as well as from Gov. Gavin Newsom, who authorized the transfer last September and codified into law that the property had been wrongfully taken.
Many say Bruce’s Beach could forge a path for those seeking to reckon with past injustices that violently dispossessed Indigenous people and blocked Black people, Latinos, Japanese Americans and many others from owning property and building wealth in this country.
According to the motion, the county last month completed the process of confirming that Marcus and Derrick Bruce, the great-grandsons of Charles and Willa Bruce, are their legal heirs. They have formed a limited liability company to hold the property.
“At long last, the descendants of Willa and Charles Bruce will be able to begin rebuilding the wealth that has been denied to generations of Bruces since their property was seized nearly a century ago,” Hahn said in a statement. “We will never be able to rectify the injustice that was inflicted upon the Bruce family, but this is a start, and it is the right thing to do.”
Supervisor Holly Mitchell, the motion’s co-author, said the land should never have been taken from the Bruces.
“Now, we are on the precipice of redemption and justice that is long overdue,” Mitchell said. “Although we cannot change the past, we have a responsibility to learn from it and to do what is right today. ... I look forward to standing with my colleagues on the right side of history.”