Eminent Domain of Bruce’s Beach Racially Motivated?

@VideoMattPresents drives by this park everyday until on one occasion VMP decided to park and get out and read about the Bruce's Beach plaque. The story surrounding Bruces family may be the first of many we see regarding eminent domain lawsuits.

#videomattpresents #SB796 #BrucesBeach

Willa and Charles Bruce opened a Black-friendly resort in Manhattan Beach in 1911, and its led to the burgeoning Black community by the early 1920s. But pushback — both through violent intimidation and legal (though morally questionable, according to one official from the time) means — led the city to compel the Bruces and a handful of other Black families out of the homes they built through an eminent domain lawsuit.

The Bruces and their neighbors were out by 1929; three families repurchased to live elsewhere in Manhattan Beach, but the Bruces left. The neighborhood was quashed, and to this day, Manhattan Beach’s Black population is estimated to be less than one percent of the city’s population.

At the time, the city claimed plans to redevelop the two seized blocks into a park. No park would be built until, at the earliest, the late 1950s. The park underwent a handful of name changes over the years before, in the mid 2000s, then-Mayor Mitch Ward was among a handful of advocates for changing the name to honor the Bruce family. Ward is the only Black person to have served as a city council member or mayor for Manhattan Beach.

https://spectrumnews1.com/ca/la-west/politics/2021/07/20/manhattan-beach-to-discuss-bruce-s-beach-plaques ( Bruces Beach)