How one beach city's racial reckoning is putting California's racist history front and center

NewsVine_Mariyam

Platinum Member
Mar 3, 2018
9,250
6,113
1,030
The Beautiful Pacific Northwest
We constantly hear the same refrain from the resident racists here on U.S. Message Board how incidents we often site "happened so long ago" and/or that it didn't directly impact any of us, subsequently dismissing them as irrelevant.

Well this article illustrates how this incident which occurred over 100 years ago resulted in a continuing harm that I am so very pleased to hear, is going to be redressed. The actions and reactions of those responsible for the hostility and harassment directed at this family is standard operating procedure for white supremacists, both in and out of government.

How one beach city's racial reckoning is putting California's racist history front and center
“Returning Bruce’s Beach would certainly repair the damage done to Charles and Willa’s family who lost out on generational wealth, but it can never repair the trauma inflicted by the KKK," a family spokesman said.

Image: Manhattan Beach Shoreline Property Seized From Black Family In The 20's To Be Returned To Family's Heirs

A photo of Charles and Willa Bruce is attached to a plaque marking Bruce's Beach in Manhattan Beach, Calif., on April 19, 2021.Mario Tama / Getty Images


April 20, 2021, 8:40 AM PDT
By Alicia Victoria Lozano
LOS ANGELES - The ancestors of a Black family forced out of business nearly 100 years ago by officials of a wealthy coastal city south of Los Angeles are on the verge of recouping what once belonged to them.
On Tuesday, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors will vote on two motions that would begin the process of transferring beachfront property to the descendants of Charles and Willa Bruce, whose once-thriving resort in affluent Manhattan Beach was taken under eminent domain in 1924. A statewide bill was also introduced earlier this month that will allow Los Angeles County to return the land to the Bruce family's descendants.

Returning Bruce’s Beach to the family that first developed the land is part of California’s broader push toward reckoning with its checkered past, which also includes reforming the criminal justice system and creating a pathway for reparation payments to descendants of slaves.
“People are looking at different kinds of ways to not just to rectify the racial injustice that happened last year [when George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police], but the racial injustice that's been going on in the United States for years,” historian Alison Rose Jefferson said. “We’re at a time where we have more people in power who are willing to think about this as an option.”
Image: Bruce's Beach

Bruce's Beach in Manhattan Beach, Calif.Dean Musgrove / The Orange County Register via AP

In addition to a statewide bill that would remove legal barriers to returning the beachfront property to the Bruce family, California lawmakers are also weighing multiple proposals aimed at recalibrating the criminal justice system. This includes creating a pathway to decertify police officers who commit serious misconduct or violate a person’s civil rights. The amended bill, which was first introduced in 2019 by state Sen. Steven Bradford, a Democrat from Gardena, is named after a 25-year-old Black man who was shot and killed by police in 2018.

Bradford is also behind other reform efforts, including the creation of a cannabis equity program that would funnel millions in grant money to communities disproportionately affected by the so-called war on drugs. Bradford was appointed in February to a task force that will study and develop reparation proposals for Black Californians descended from slaves. In a statement issued at the time of his appointment to the task force, he said this is not just about slavery, but about “paying back a debt to those who have been mistreated for so long.”

“Never has the trauma of four million enslaved people and their descendants and the impact it continues to have been meaningfully acknowledged or addressed by our nation,” he said. “The consequences of these actions are felt today in many forms, not the least of which are the major disparities in life outcomes such as economic opportunity and quality of health care.”

Last year, California officials weighed a bill that would have encouraged public spaces, including parks, libraries and museums, to add statements acknowledging the institutions were “founded upon exclusions and erasures of many Indigenous peoples.” The bill passed in the state Assembly but later died in the Senate.
In Southern California, Bruce’s Beach, now commemorated by a plaque in the middle of a lush green park near the original beachfront property, has long stood as a reminder of Manhattan Beach’s dubious history. Wedged between residential streets, the park offers impressive views of the Pacific Ocean and one of the few green spaces in an otherwise heavily developed beach haven for wealthy residents, less than 1 percent of whom are Black, according to census data.

The parcel of land once owned by the Bruces was transferred to the state and then to Los Angeles County in 1995. It currently houses the Lifeguard Training Center.
Charles and Willa Bruce first purchased their land in 1912 just as Manhattan Beach was becoming a popular destination for people from all over Southern California. Trolleys and trains carried passengers from as far as Pasadena, some 30 miles away near the San Gabriel Mountains. Their vision had been to build a coastal oasis where Black families could swim and mingle without being targeted or harassed.
“They were pioneers,” Jefferson said. “It was successful from day one and the African Americans there were harassed from day one.”

The resort included everything typical of a beach getaway - a changing room, dining room, residences and even a dancing hall. Willa Bruce ran the popular cafe and entertainment offerings while her husband worked as a chef on a train dining car. They purchased the land for $1,225.

Despite being located on a remote part of the coast, the Bruces were targeted by the Ku Klux Klan and other racist locals. City ordinances were passed to make it more difficult for outsiders to visit the beach, including making it illegal to change clothes in a car or park for more than one hour, Jefferson said. The KKK slashed tires and even left a burning mattress outside a property belonging to the Bruce family. Similar harassment was experienced in other parts of the county, including a Santa Monica beach pejoratively dubbed Inkwell, according to Jefferson.

Image: Willa Bruce Los Angeles Times article clipping, 1912

Willa Bruce Los Angeles Times article clipping, 1912.Courtesy Bruce Family

In 1924, Manhattan Beach city officials seized the Bruces’ land under eminent domain, which was also invoked to take property from Japanese people across the state and Latino families who lived in the area near what is now home to Dodger Stadium.

The Bruce family attempted to fight the city and ultimately lost, winning just $14,500 for their beachfront land.
“I learned to swim just a couple of blocks from Bruce’s Beach,” said Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn, who co-authored the two motions being considered Tuesday. “I’m embarrassed that I didn’t know the story and how much pain it caused the Bruce family and how much pain it has caused other African Americans who did know the story and felt like there wasn’t going to be any righting of this wrong.”

After their land was taken, the Bruce family moved to the city of Los Angeles and eventually out of the state. Their descendants are now scattered throughout the country, some living at or below the poverty line despite once owning land that is now thought to be worth several millions of dollars, said Chief Duane Yellow Feather Shepard, family spokesman and a distant relative of Charles and Willa Bruce.

Image: Bruce family 2018 reunion in Bruce's Beach, Ca

Bruce family 2018 reunion in Bruce's Beach, Ca.Courtesy Bruce Family

Shepard, chief of the Pocasset Wampanoag Tribe of the Pokanoket Nation, is now working with other family members to track down descendants of relatives enslaved on various plantations throughout the country. Through these efforts, the family has reunited long lost connections but also been forced to face the lasting trauma of slavery in the United States.

“It’s traumatic to families to not know their history,” he said. “Returning Bruce’s Beach would certainly repair the damage done to Charles and Willa’s family who lost out on generational wealth, but it can never repair the trauma inflicted by the KKK.”

Manhattan Beach city officials said they will not offer a formal apology to the family despite repeated pleas from Hahn, county leaders and many residents. Instead, City Council members adopted a resolution earlier this month acknowledging and condemning the city’s past action and agreeing to install new historical markers at the site.

The city’s refusal to apologize underscores the tension between reckoning with injustice and finding a path forward, according to Vilma Ortiz, sociology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

“Apologies are a really important first step. They show acknowledgment that things happened that were wrong and it suggests people are going to change,” she said. “Apologies are good but they’re not enough.”
 
Recent history is of course reminding everybody why most sane people in the past supported segregation; it lowers violent crime and asshole public behavior significantly and prevents murders of children and the elderly by preventing a lot of contact with feral animals.
 
Recent history is of course reminding everybody why most sane people in the past supported segregation; it lowers violent crime and asshole public behavior significantly and prevents murders of children and the elderly by preventing a lot of contact with feral animals.
We see you.


He doesn't seem to be hiding.
 
Recent history is of course reminding everybody why most sane people in the past supported segregation; it lowers violent crime and asshole public behavior significantly and prevents murders of children and the elderly by preventing a lot of contact with feral animals.
We see you.


He doesn't seem to be hiding.

These vermin run around the innernetz taking names for their pogroms and planned future murders; it's cute how they think they're scary n stuff.They think they can intimidate everybody while spreading their sicko commie faggot bullshit around like it was fact or something.
 
This is so stupid. I had a thread up a week or so ago about this nonsense.

 
Continuing harm? How so?
It's in the first paragraph
“Returning Bruce’s Beach would certainly repair the damage done to Charles and Willa’s family who lost out on generational wealth, but it can never repair the trauma inflicted by the KKK," a family spokesman said.
Have you never heard the expression "Justice delayed is justice denied"?
 
lol @ 'generational wealth' nonsense. Just admit you want to steal lots of stuff and you want to see to it that cops can't arrest you scum for criminal activities. Only true pieces of shit make heroes out of George Floyd and his ilk.
 
'....descendants of Charles and Willa Bruce, whose once-thriving resort in affluent Manhattan Beach was taken under eminent domain in 1924'


If taken by the state of Cali - so it should be returned.
 
'....descendants of Charles and Willa Bruce, whose once-thriving resort in affluent Manhattan Beach was taken under eminent domain in 1924'


If taken by the state of Cali - so it should be returned.
I was surprised to hear that the government was giving it back to the descendants. I thought once they appropriated land it was pretty much gone for good unless they didn't follow proper procedure and the original owners could prove so in court.
 
lol @ 'generational wealth' nonsense. Just admit you want to steal lots of stuff and you want to see to it that cops can't arrest you scum for criminal activities. Only true pieces of shit make heroes out of George Floyd and his ilk.
So I guess you don't have any? Generational wealth?

So I guess you think that gimmick sells? lol too lazy to steal yourself? Need Whitey to hand it to you?
 
We constantly hear the same refrain from the resident racists here on U.S. Message Board how incidents we often site "happened so long ago" and/or that it didn't directly impact any of us, subsequently dismissing them as irrelevant.

Well this article illustrates how this incident which occurred over 100 years ago resulted in a continuing harm that I am so very pleased to hear, is going to be redressed. The actions and reactions of those responsible for the hostility and harassment directed at this family is standard operating procedure for white supremacists, both in and out of government.

How one beach city's racial reckoning is putting California's racist history front and center
“Returning Bruce’s Beach would certainly repair the damage done to Charles and Willa’s family who lost out on generational wealth, but it can never repair the trauma inflicted by the KKK," a family spokesman said.

Image: Manhattan Beach Shoreline Property Seized From Black Family In The 20's To Be Returned To Family's Heirs's To Be Returned To Family's Heirs

A photo of Charles and Willa Bruce is attached to a plaque marking Bruce's Beach in Manhattan Beach, Calif., on April 19, 2021.Mario Tama / Getty Images


April 20, 2021, 8:40 AM PDT
By Alicia Victoria Lozano
LOS ANGELES - The ancestors of a Black family forced out of business nearly 100 years ago by officials of a wealthy coastal city south of Los Angeles are on the verge of recouping what once belonged to them.
On Tuesday, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors will vote on two motions that would begin the process of transferring beachfront property to the descendants of Charles and Willa Bruce, whose once-thriving resort in affluent Manhattan Beach was taken under eminent domain in 1924. A statewide bill was also introduced earlier this month that will allow Los Angeles County to return the land to the Bruce family's descendants.

Returning Bruce’s Beach to the family that first developed the land is part of California’s broader push toward reckoning with its checkered past, which also includes reforming the criminal justice system and creating a pathway for reparation payments to descendants of slaves.
“People are looking at different kinds of ways to not just to rectify the racial injustice that happened last year [when George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police], but the racial injustice that's been going on in the United States for years,” historian Alison Rose Jefferson said. “We’re at a time where we have more people in power who are willing to think about this as an option.”
Image: Bruce's Beach's Beach

Bruce's Beach in Manhattan Beach, Calif.Dean Musgrove / The Orange County Register via AP

In addition to a statewide bill that would remove legal barriers to returning the beachfront property to the Bruce family, California lawmakers are also weighing multiple proposals aimed at recalibrating the criminal justice system. This includes creating a pathway to decertify police officers who commit serious misconduct or violate a person’s civil rights. The amended bill, which was first introduced in 2019 by state Sen. Steven Bradford, a Democrat from Gardena, is named after a 25-year-old Black man who was shot and killed by police in 2018.

Bradford is also behind other reform efforts, including the creation of a cannabis equity program that would funnel millions in grant money to communities disproportionately affected by the so-called war on drugs. Bradford was appointed in February to a task force that will study and develop reparation proposals for Black Californians descended from slaves. In a statement issued at the time of his appointment to the task force, he said this is not just about slavery, but about “paying back a debt to those who have been mistreated for so long.”

“Never has the trauma of four million enslaved people and their descendants and the impact it continues to have been meaningfully acknowledged or addressed by our nation,” he said. “The consequences of these actions are felt today in many forms, not the least of which are the major disparities in life outcomes such as economic opportunity and quality of health care.”

Last year, California officials weighed a bill that would have encouraged public spaces, including parks, libraries and museums, to add statements acknowledging the institutions were “founded upon exclusions and erasures of many Indigenous peoples.” The bill passed in the state Assembly but later died in the Senate.
In Southern California, Bruce’s Beach, now commemorated by a plaque in the middle of a lush green park near the original beachfront property, has long stood as a reminder of Manhattan Beach’s dubious history. Wedged between residential streets, the park offers impressive views of the Pacific Ocean and one of the few green spaces in an otherwise heavily developed beach haven for wealthy residents, less than 1 percent of whom are Black, according to census data.

The parcel of land once owned by the Bruces was transferred to the state and then to Los Angeles County in 1995. It currently houses the Lifeguard Training Center.
Charles and Willa Bruce first purchased their land in 1912 just as Manhattan Beach was becoming a popular destination for people from all over Southern California. Trolleys and trains carried passengers from as far as Pasadena, some 30 miles away near the San Gabriel Mountains. Their vision had been to build a coastal oasis where Black families could swim and mingle without being targeted or harassed.
“They were pioneers,” Jefferson said. “It was successful from day one and the African Americans there were harassed from day one.”

The resort included everything typical of a beach getaway - a changing room, dining room, residences and even a dancing hall. Willa Bruce ran the popular cafe and entertainment offerings while her husband worked as a chef on a train dining car. They purchased the land for $1,225.

Despite being located on a remote part of the coast, the Bruces were targeted by the Ku Klux Klan and other racist locals. City ordinances were passed to make it more difficult for outsiders to visit the beach, including making it illegal to change clothes in a car or park for more than one hour, Jefferson said. The KKK slashed tires and even left a burning mattress outside a property belonging to the Bruce family. Similar harassment was experienced in other parts of the county, including a Santa Monica beach pejoratively dubbed Inkwell, according to Jefferson.

Image: Willa Bruce Los Angeles Times article clipping, 1912

Willa Bruce Los Angeles Times article clipping, 1912.Courtesy Bruce Family

In 1924, Manhattan Beach city officials seized the Bruces’ land under eminent domain, which was also invoked to take property from Japanese people across the state and Latino families who lived in the area near what is now home to Dodger Stadium.

The Bruce family attempted to fight the city and ultimately lost, winning just $14,500 for their beachfront land.
“I learned to swim just a couple of blocks from Bruce’s Beach,” said Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn, who co-authored the two motions being considered Tuesday. “I’m embarrassed that I didn’t know the story and how much pain it caused the Bruce family and how much pain it has caused other African Americans who did know the story and felt like there wasn’t going to be any righting of this wrong.”

After their land was taken, the Bruce family moved to the city of Los Angeles and eventually out of the state. Their descendants are now scattered throughout the country, some living at or below the poverty line despite once owning land that is now thought to be worth several millions of dollars, said Chief Duane Yellow Feather Shepard, family spokesman and a distant relative of Charles and Willa Bruce.

Image: Bruce family 2018 reunion in Bruce's Beach, Ca's Beach, Ca

Bruce family 2018 reunion in Bruce's Beach, Ca.Courtesy Bruce Family

Shepard, chief of the Pocasset Wampanoag Tribe of the Pokanoket Nation, is now working with other family members to track down descendants of relatives enslaved on various plantations throughout the country. Through these efforts, the family has reunited long lost connections but also been forced to face the lasting trauma of slavery in the United States.

“It’s traumatic to families to not know their history,” he said. “Returning Bruce’s Beach would certainly repair the damage done to Charles and Willa’s family who lost out on generational wealth, but it can never repair the trauma inflicted by the KKK.”

Manhattan Beach city officials said they will not offer a formal apology to the family despite repeated pleas from Hahn, county leaders and many residents. Instead, City Council members adopted a resolution earlier this month acknowledging and condemning the city’s past action and agreeing to install new historical markers at the site.

The city’s refusal to apologize underscores the tension between reckoning with injustice and finding a path forward, according to Vilma Ortiz, sociology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

“Apologies are a really important first step. They show acknowledgment that things happened that were wrong and it suggests people are going to change,” she said. “Apologies are good but they’re not enough.”

lol Some lawyers found a real states scam they can run by whipping up a Pity Party; I bet if one were to follow Senator Bradford's money and his relatives and cronies we see a big shiney Rolls in his future. Any word on the rest of those former beach owners' family suddenly getting theirs back? lol Don't hold your breath.
 
Steven Bradford Net Worth

His net worth has been growing significantly in 2019-2020. So, how much is Steven Bradford worth at the age of 60 years old? Steven Bradford’s income source is mostly from being a successful Politician. He is from . We have estimated Steven Bradford's net worth, money, salary, income, and assets.


Lot of building trades and real estate money finds it way into good ole Stevie's pockets; his wealth took a big jump last year, too.

 
As far as I can tell, the only reason racism is being brought up is because they were black.
My queestion is, why didnt the article provide details? Like why their land was taken through eminent domain. Pretty important!
 
As far as I can tell, the only reason racism is being brought up is because they were black.
My queestion is, why didnt the article provide details? Like why their land was taken through eminent domain. Pretty important!

They didn't take the land cuz they were black, they took the land to make the entire beach front there public access, the same as they do with parks. The real estate boom in the early 1920's was quickly choking off one of the region's top tourist draws with crappy beachfront low end carny crap. This is was just a real estate scam hiding behind a 'Social Justice' front scam, and pretty typical of black pols everywhere, same as all the other scams they run.
 

Forum List

Back
Top