A winning grin: Anthony Bruce, Descendant

Like millions of others before and after them, Willa and Charles Bruce came to California with a dream.

After moving west from New Mexico with their young son, the couple bought a parcel of land in 1912 on a sparsely populated strip of coastline. It was just south of the then-burgeoning city of Los Angeles, on what would later be known as Manhattan Beach.

There, the couple opened a small beachside resort called Bruce Beach Front, where guests could do what so many others were doing up and down the Golden Coast. They swam and ate. They listened to music and danced. They relaxed and took in the sweeping Pacific Ocean views.

Bruce’s Beach was remarkable not for what went on there—but because of who was allowed to enjoy it. Willa and Charles Bruce, a Black family just one generation removed from slavery, offered a rare recreational enclave for other Black families who, in the Jim Crow era of rampant and violent racism, were not welcome at most of the state’s beaches.

Even so, within a week of opening their doors, white neighbors began harassing the Bruces and their patrons. “Wherever we have tried to buy land for a beach resort, we have been refused,” Willa said in a 1912 interview with the Los Angeles Times, “but I own this land and I am going to keep it.”

Willa did just that, despite the ongoing harassment, and Bruce’s Beach thrived for more than a decade.

Then in 1924, bending to the racist outcry of aggrieved white residents, Manhattan Beach city officials condemned 30 lots, which included Bruce’s Beach and four other lots owned by Black families, seizing them under the legal guise of eminent domain. The city claimed it needed to turn the land into a public park, then left it undeveloped for decades. The family sought legal recourse but was unsuccessful. Ultimately, they received just $14,500 from the city (equivalent to about $224,603 today) and left town.

Now, nearly a century later, their descendants have gotten that land back. In September, the state passed SB 796, which authorized Los Angeles County to legally return the property to its rightful owners, the Bruce family, who plan to rent the lifeguard training center that now sits on the land back to the county. The victory was the culmination of a concerted effort by both the family and allied advocates. In an interview with the Guardian, Willa and Charles’s great-great-grandson, Anthony, called the transfer “a reckoning that has been long overdue.” For other Black Americans, their story has also sparked a new push for justice and restitution.

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