The Bruce family, a Black family, decided to sell the beachfront property they recovered back to LA County.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the California county originally seized the family’s property over 50 years ago. At the time, Charles and Willa Bruce were driven out of their resort by the Klu Klux Klan and racist real estate agents in 1924. Now, their descendants are making serious bank off the beach’s profits.
County Board Of Supervisors Chair Janice Hahn said the transaction enables the Bruce Family to rebuild the generational wealth that was snatched from them.
“This is what reparations look like, and it is a model that I hope governments across the country will follow,” Hahn said in a statement.
The Bruce Beach property’s return to its owners’ descendants is reportedly the first time the government returned land while acknowledging it was seized. The family had reportedly created an organization that refueled the fight to reclaim it back in 2006. Thankfully, they had another opportunity to get it as California seemed interested in giving reparations to its Black residents. As a result, Cali legislators granted the state permission to transfer the Beach property back to its rightful owners via the passing of SB 796 in February 2021.
The property was estimated to be worth $75 million but, per the transfer agreement, LA County agreed to repurchase it for $20 million, a third of that price.
“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,” their attorney, George Fatheree, said in an interview. “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.”
