Posted: July 11th, 2006

The City of Manhattan Beach has taken an important step for equal justice, voting to commemorate the proud legacy of African-American Los Angeles by changing the name of an ocean front park back to Bruces’ Beach. Bruces’ Beach was one of the few beaches in Southern California in the early 1900s that was not off-limits to African Americans. This sends a strong message that such struggles need to be remembered and celebrated rather than buried in the past.

Until the Manhattan Beach City Council recently changed the name, the Beach was officially called Parque Culiacan, in reference to Culiacan, Mexico. The City Project submitted a letter with the endorsement of Mr. Bernard Bruce (grandson of Charles and Willa Bruce) urging the City to rename the park to honor the legacy of the Bruce family and the broader struggle for civil rights, equality, and dignity.

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 in Southern California that allowed Blacks. Bruces’ Beach offered ocean breezes, bathhouses, outdoor sports, dining, and dancing to African-Americans who craved their fair share 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 the “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, which was 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.

Now, eighty years later, the site will secure its place in history and once again be known as Bruces’ Beach.

The City Project and others have worked to secure equal access to public beaches through our work and publications including Robert García and Erica Flores Baltodano, Free the Beach! Public Access, Equal Justice, and the California Coast, 2 Stanford Journal of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties 143 (2005), and Robert García and Erica Flores Baltodano, Awakening from the Dream: Pursuing Civil Rights in a Conservative Era (Denise C. Morgan et al., ed., 2005).

For more information please visit www.cityprojectca.org.