Gov. Gavin Newsom is expected to sign a bill Thursday that will enable the return of a Manhattan Beach property to the descendants of the original Black owners.
Bruce’s Beach was taken from Willa and Charles Bruce nearly a century ago. They bought it in 1912 and built a resort catering to Black residents, who had few options at the time for enjoying time along the California coast.
Complete with a bathhouse, dance hall, and cafe, the resort attracted other Black families who purchased adjacent land and created what they hoped would be an ocean-view retreat.
But the resort quickly became a target of the area’s white populace, leading to acts of vandalism, attacks on vehicles of Black visitors, and even a 1920 attack by the Ku Klux Klan.
The city eventually illegally seized the land through eminent domain in 1924, and other surrounding parcels, under the pretense of planning to build a city park. Today, the land could be worth up to half a billion dollars.
These types of illegal seizures of properties originally owned by Black families were rampant throughout the United United.
Many experts believe that more than 50 thousand privately Black-owned properties were illegally sized by many cities and counties throughout the United States.
California has taken a bold step towards the right direction, but other States mostly in the South are still in denial and continues to dwell in ignorance as regards the injustice that African Americans have suffered.
AFRO WORLD NEWS
