After returning Bruce’s Beach to the descendants of Willa and Charles Bruce, the family has decided to sell the property back to L.A. county for almost $20 million, reports the Los Angeles Times.
Per the agreement that was drawn in June of 2022, the members of the Bruce family had a two-year window to sell the property to the country and they exercised their right.
County Board of Supervisors Chair Janice Hahn, who was instrumental in the transfer of the property back to the Bruce family said the sale was an example of how reparations could work on the state level.
“They feel what is best for them is selling this property back to the county for nearly $20 million and finally rebuilding the generational wealth they were denied for nearly a century,” Hahn said in a statement. “This is what reparations look like and it is a model that I hope governments across the country will follow.”
George Fatheree, the family’s attorney said “the sale was still a victory for the Bruce descendants,” who will now have generational wealth, something that their ancestors were robbed of.
“What was stolen from the family was the property, but what the property represented was the ability to create and preserve and group and pass down generational wealth,” Fatheree said. “And by allowing the family now to have certainty in selling this property to the county, taking the proceeds of that sale, and investing it in their own futures — that’s restoring some of what the family lost. I think we all need to respect the family’s decision to know what’s in its best interest.”
Fatheree also noted that the family decided to sell the property because the land was not zoned for development, and they didn’t want to deal with the years of municipal bureaucracy in the county if they planned to rebuild on the land.
“At the end of the day, what the family was very focused on was certainty and being able to access the proceeds of the sale,” he added.
In 1912, Willa and Charles Bruce purchased their property for $1,225 and eventually added some other parcels of land to create a beach resort for African Americans
Several years later, the beachfront property became a target of racial violence “such as vandalism on the buildings, attacks on vehicles of Black visitors and even a 1920 attack by the Ku Klux Klan.”
After increasing pressure, the city moved to condemn Bruce’s property and the surrounding land in 1924, “seizing it through eminent domain under the pretense of planning to build a city park.”
Ultimately, the resort was forced to close and the Bruces along with other Black families lost their land in 1929.
The families filed lawsuits claiming they were removed because of institutional racism and the Bruces and other families were awarded some damages but the resort never reopened.
The city, which originally said the property was needed for a public park, allowed the land to remain unoccupied for decades. The land was transferred to the state, and then to the county in 1995.
In September 2021, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill clearing the way for the beach to be transferred back to the descendants of Willa and Charles Bruce.
“I want to apologize to the Bruce family for the injustice that was done to them,” Newsom said at the time. “We haven’t always had a proud past.”
Currently, the county maintains a lifeguard training facility on the property since it was transferred last summer. Before the sale, the county agreed to lease the property from the Bruces for $413,000 a year.
The end of January is the deadline for both parties to close on the sale.