In a history making vote, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved an unprecedented plan to return Bruce’s Beach to a Black family that had been run out of Manhattan Beach almost a century ago — paving the way for more efforts by the government to rectify historic injustices that were racially motivated.

Charles and Willa Bruce had found their way to a burgeoning California in 1912, years after white developers claimed the ancestral homelands of the Tongva people and built what is known today as Manhattan Beach.

Willa purchased two lots right by the sand and ran a popular lodge, cafe and dance hall that extended a rare welcome to Black beachgoers. A few more Black families, drawn to this new neighborhood that became known as Bruce’s Beach, bought and built their own cottages by the sea.

But the Bruces and their guests faced increasing threats from white neighbors. The Ku Klux Klan and local real estate agents purportedly plotted to harass them.

When racism failed to drive this Black beach community out of town, city officials in 1924 condemned the neighborhood and seized more than two dozen properties through eminent domain.

They said there was an urgent need for a public park.

But the properties sat empty for decades. The two oceanfront parcels that had been owned by the Bruces were transferred to the state in 1948, then to the county in 1995.

When L.A. County Supervisor Janice Hahn realized the county owned the parcels where the resort once stood, she joined forces with Supervisor Holly Mitchell, and State Sen. Steve Bradford, who rallied lawmakers and the governor to transfer the parcels back to the Bruce family.

“This has been a marathon, not a sprint — and it was a marathon where a number of people have taken the baton and pass it and pass it and pass it to get us here today,” said Supervisor Holly Mitchell #latimes