Once Black-Owned Southern California Beach, Bruce’s Beach Was Condemned By White People Who Declared Black Americans Were No Longer Welcomed in Town. The City of Manhattan Beach condemned Bruce’s Beach, and some residents pressured Black property owners to sell their land at prices below fair market value.
A beach resort in the City of Manhattan Beach, California, Bruce’s Beach at one time was Black-owned and was dedicated to serving African-Americans who had no places to vacation at white resorts due to segregation laws. Bruce’s Beach was a place where Blacks could go to the beach in southern California in the 1920’s.
In 1912 when the beach was first incorporated, George H. Peck one of the founders of the Manhattan Beach rejected the concept of racial exclusion and had a clause written into the city’s deed saying that two city blocks of beach-front area would be put aside for Black Americans to buy. The opened the opportunity for Charles and Willa Bruce, entrepreneurs and to buy the property for $1,225 in 1912, add on three additional lots, and then to build Southern California’s first black beach resort. The admiration for Southern California’s good new owners encouraged the building of new homes and cottages that would cater to Black vacationers.
Related: Samuel B. Fuller Borrowed $25 To Start His Company And Later Became the Wealthiest Black Man in The U.S. in the 1950’s
With the coastal land becoming more affordable and available to purchase many Black Americans settled in Los Angeles. Thus, bringing more Black people to Bruce’s Beach which caused resentment in the local white community. In the early 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan gained a local following who declared that Black people who frequented Bruce’s Beach would no longer be welcomed in town. The City of Manhattan Beach would condemn Bruce’s Beach, and some residents pressured black property owners to sell their land at below fair market prices. Other properties were taken through eminent domain proceedings in 1924. This forced Black landholders and most Black beachgoers to relocate to another Black-only section of San Monica Beach, The Inkwell.
Manhattan Beach later attempted to lease the Bruce’s Beach land to a private individual as a whites-only beach, however, relented in the face of a civil disobedience campaign organized by the NAACP in 1927. Over the years that followed the beach was mainly referred to as City Park or Beach Front Park. Then in 2006, the ownership changed once again. In response, the Manhattan Beach City Council renamed the area Bruce’s Beach and it was officially designated as such during a public ceremony there on March 31, 2007.
Sources:
The City Project: Equal Justice, Democracy, and Livability for All.
Bruce’s Beach.2 Stanford Journal of Civil; Rights and Civil Liberties,
143 (2005), available at:
http://www.cityprojectca.org/ourwork/brucesbeach.html; Michelle Murphy.
Parks and Recreation Commission Recommends Changing Park Name, (June
2006), retrieved December 1, 2009 in The Manhattan Beach Observer,
available at
http://www.manhattanbeachresidentsassociation.org/the_observer/200606.pdf;
Dawnya Pring. City Council wrap. (December 7, 2006), available at:
http://www.tbrnews.com/articles/2006/12/07/mahattan_beach_news/news06.txt,
The Beach Reporter, retrieved 2009-12-01; Douglas Flamming. Bound for
Freedom: Black Los Angeles in Jim Crow America. University of California
Press, 2006, available at:
http://books.google.com/books?id=DK5Bd50XA4gC&pg=PA272; The History
of Bruce’s Beach, California. Weekend America, March 31, 2007, available
at:
http://weekendamerica.publicradio.org/display/web/2007/03/31/the_history_of_bruces_beach_california/;
“What’s the Matter with Bruce’s Beach.” California Eagle (July 8,
1927); and Bruce’s Beach, available at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce’s_Beach.
Link to original source