California Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed a new bill on Thursday that will return Bruce’s Beach to the descendants of a Black couple who were driven out of the property by white residents almost 100 years ago.
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Senate Bill 796 was signed by Newsom at Manhattan Beach and he was accompanied by the descendants of Willa and Charles Bruce. Back in June, it was passed by the state legislature that the Bruce family will regain their beach property that is currently between the value of $35 million and $75 million as reported by Insider. Newsom also apologized to the family for the horrors their descendants endured due to racism. “What we’re doing here today can be done and replicated anywhere else. There’s an old adage: Once a mind is stretched it never goes back to it’s original form,” he said.
The bill reads, “The land in the City of Manhattan Beach, which was wrongfully taken from Willa and Charles Bruce, should be returned to their living descendants, and it is in the public interest of the State of California, the County of Los Angeles, the City of Manhattan Beach, and the People of the State of California to do so.”
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Willa and Charles originally purchased the land for $1,225 in 1912 and opened a beachfront resort for Black families to visit. However, it was destroyed when members of the Ku Klux Klan and other white nationalists invaded home and destroyed property in the affluent Black community.