After nearly three years of controversy and intense debate, Manhattan Beach on Saturday held a ceremony of its own to acknowledge its racist history at Bruce’s Beach — and to mark what city leaders are calling a new chapter of healing
While many still take issue with the cityto the Bruce family, the mayor’s personal apology drew big cheers Saturday. The new plaque also notes that “The City’s action at the time was racially motivated and wrong. Today, the City acknowledges and condemns those past actions, and empathizes with those whose property was seized.”
Alison Rose Jefferson, a historian who documented the story of Bruce’s Beach in her book “Living the California Dream: African American Leisure Sites during the Jim Crow Era,” said the city’s new memorial does illustrate a better understanding of the history — it at least describes the property seizures in clear detail — but there are still a number of inaccuracies in the text.
“Everything as it relates to housing, education, policing — everything today says this is the same Manhattan Beach that it was 100 years ago,” said Ward, who isfive other Black families in California with stories similar to that of the Bruces. “Manhattan Beach still has a debt to pay to all of the Black families forced out of that community and to all of the Black people they continue to systematically prevent from taking up space in that community.
But Ward acknowledged that Bruce’s Beach has in some ways transcended local politics. Visitors across the county now come to the park to reflect and pay homage to what Ward calls a “national treasure for Black people.”Reaching even this inflection point has been far from easy for Manhattan Beach, but many in town hoped Saturday’s gathering meant the community had finally found a way to move forward.
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