Racial Reckoning: Manhattan Beach City Council stops short of issuing a Bruce’s Beach apology
by Mark McDermott The recommendations of the Bruce’s Beach Task Force came to the City Council Tuesday night with a backdrop that included not only the century-old, racially-inspired and city-backed misdeed that resulted in the taking of an African-American beachfront resort, but national attention on just what Manhattan Beach now intends to do to address that history. What occurred at Bruce’s Beach in 1920s, when the Klu Klux Klan and other white supremacists were aided and abetted by the City of Manhattan Beach to take land from Willa and Charles Bruce and the fledgling African-American community that was growing around their resort, had largely been a hidden history until the Black Lives Matter movement last year cast a new light on underlying causes of ongoing racial inequities in the United States. In the wake of BLM protests in Manhattan Beach last year, the City Council sought to address that historical wrong by establishing the Bruce’s Beach Task Force. The 13-member body was appointed by councilmembers and tasked with establishing a more accurate history of what had occurred, propose replacement language for the current plaque at Bruce’s Beach Park, develop ideas for…
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