The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors announced Tuesday that the Bruce family had decided to sell back Bruce's Beach to L.A. County for nearly $20 million.
The announcement comes six months after the board unanimously voted to return the beachside property to the Bruces, a Black family that had been pushed out of Manhattan Beach nearly a century ago. The Ku Klux Klan, along with other white residents of the area, had plotted to drive the family from the beach community and city officials later condemned their property in 1924 through eminent domain. The family's resort was demolished.
In an effort to "right the wrongs of the past," the board made the historic decision to return the land to the descendants of Willa and Charles Bruce, widely considered to be the first time the government had given back property to a Black family after acknowledging it had been stolen.
