A vast land on the Californian coast will be returned to the descendants of a black family from which it was torn away nearly a century ago, according to a decision taken by local authorities in order to “repair a historic injustice”.
The property, now known as “Bruce Beach”, was purchased in 1912 by Charles and Willa Bruce, two African Americans who converted it into a beach hotel for black vacationers at a time when access to public beaches was still largely segregated.
The Ku Klux Klan had stormed the property in 1920
But racist attacks and acts of vandalism had multiplied from the predominantly white population of the surrounding area. The Ku Klux Klan had even stormed the property in 1920.
The city of Manhattan Beach, just south of Los Angeles, then sought in 1924 to expropriate the Bruce family, a maneuver “racist in nature to drive out this prosperous black business and its customers” from the area, comments the approved act unanimously by Los Angeles County on Tuesday. She achieved this in 1929.
The great-grandsons will rent and then sell the land to the community
Once the expropriation was approved, under the pretext of building a municipal park there, the community did nothing. “We can’t change the past and we can never undo the injustice inflicted on Willa and Charles Bruce a century ago, but it’s a start,” county official Janice Hahn said Tuesday, according to that restitution will allow their descendants to “begin to rebuild the generational heritage that was denied to them”. The land is currently occupied by the facilities of the city’s lifeguards.
The agreement provides that Marcus and Derrick Bruce, the great-grandsons of Charles and Willa, lease their property to the community for at least two years, for an annual rent of $413,000, and they can coerce Manhattan Beach to buy back their land for a cost not exceeding 20 million.
“We are not giving property to anyone today, (…) we are returning property that was wrongfully taken from them, out of fear and hatred,” said Holly Mitchell, another Los Angeles County official. .