A bill awaiting Gov. Gavin Newsom’s signature Thursday will return a Manhattan Beach property to descendants of a Black couple who were stripped of their resort amid racist harassment a century ago.
California lawmakers unanimously moved to support the Bruce’s Beach bill. The governor plans to sign in Thursday at about noon.
What was known as Bruce’s Beach in the city of Manhattan Beach was purchased in 1912 by Willa and Charles Bruce. They built the first West Coast resort for Black people at a time when racial segregation barred them from many beaches.
The couple built a lodge, café, dance hall and dressing tents with bathing suits for rent.
But the Ku Klux Klan tried to burn it down. White neighbors harassed the couple and their customers. Bogus “10 minutes only” parking signs were posted and beachgoers often returned to find the air had been let out of their tires, according to a legislative analysis.
Manhattan Beach used eminent domain to seize the land in 1924, ostensibly for use as a park.
Instead, the property languished until it was transferred to the state in 1948, then transferred to Los Angeles County in 1995.
It will take the state law that legislators sent to Newsom earlier this month to transfer the property to the couple’s descendants. The transfer would also have to be approved by county supervisors.
Council members in Manhattan Beach, a predominantly white and upscale city of about 35,000 people on the south shore of Santa Monica Bay, formally condemned the property seizure in April.
Source: NBC Los Angeles