Posted: March 21st, 2006

March 21, 2006

Honorable Mitch Ward
Mayor, Manhattan Beach
1400 Highland Ave.
Manhattan Beach, CA 90266

Re: Renaming Parque Culiacan to Bruces’ Beach

Dear Mayor Ward:

We urge you to rename Parque Culiacan to Bruces’ Beach Park to commemorate and honor the civil rights legacy of Charles and Willa Bruce and the Bruce family. Mr. Bernard Bruce, grandson of Charles and Willa Bruce, fully and enthusiastically supports the effort to rename the park Bruces’ Beach Park.

When Manhattan Beach was incorporated in 1912, a two-block area on the ocean was set aside for African-Americans. Charles and Willa Bruce built a Black beach resort there, the only resort that allowed Blacks in Southern California. Bruces’ Beach offered ocean breezes, bathhouses, outdoor sports, dining, and dancing to African Americans who craved a taste of Southern California’s good life.

As coastal land became more valuable and the Black population in Los Angeles increased – bringing more African Americans to Bruces’ Beach – so did White opposition to the Black beach.

Manhattan Beach condemned the Black beach in the 1920s, driving out the Black community. A phony “no trespassing” sign was posted on what was falsely claimed to be a “private beach” owned by the city. City officials pressured Black property owners to sell at prices below fair market value and prevailed through condemnation proceedings in the 1930s. Bruces’ Beach, the nearby Peck’s Pier – the only pier that allowed Blacks – and the surrounding Black neighborhood were destroyed. Several Black homes in the area were burned down. Manhattan Beach initially tried to lease the land to a private individual as a Whites-only beach, but relented in the face of civil disobedience organized by the NAACP.

Today the site of Bruces’ Beach is marked by a small park and parking lot. Manhattan Beach residents in 2003 placed a plaque there that told the history of the people and the place.

It is time to honor the site with a name worthy of its history. Bruces’ Beach Park would honor the legacy of the Bruce family and the broader struggle for civil rights, equality, and dignity. The renaming of the park would send a strong message that the disgraceful discrimination of the past does not continue today.

Renaming the site Bruces’ Beach Park would evoke the power of this place: “The power of ordinary urban landscapes to nurture citizens’ public memory, to encompass shared time in the form of shared territory . . . . And even bitter experiences and fights communities have lost need to be remembered—so as not to diminish their importance.”

The Center and others have worked to revive the forgotten history of Bruces’ Beach through publications including Robert Garcia and Erica Flores Baltodano, Free the Beach! Public Access, Equal Justice, and the California Coast (forthcoming 1 Stanford Journal of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties 2006); Robert Garcia and Erica Flores Baltodano, Awakening from the Dream: Pursuing Civil Rights in a Conservative Era (edited by Prof. Denise C. Morgan et al., 2005); Douglas Flamming, Bound for Freedom: Blacks in Los Angeles in Jim Crow America 271-75, 303, 414 n.38 (2005); Cecilia Rasmussen, L.A. Then and Now: Resort Was an Oasis for Blacks Until Racism Drove Them Out, L.A. Times, July 21, 2002; Cecilia Rasmussen, Community Profile: Manhattan Beach, L.A. Times, Nov.29, 1996.

The site is not in any way related to Culiacan, Mexico. Maintaining that name is not historically accurate and disserves the proud memory of Bruces’ Beach.

With the strong support of Mr. Bernard Bruce, the Center urges you to rename the place to Bruces’ Beach Park.

Sincerely,

Robert García
Executive Director and Counsel

Christopher T. Hicks
Policy Director and Counsel