In 1927, a Black seaside resort called Bruce's Beach was stolen from its owners. Nearly 100 years later, the land has been returned to the family—but what was taken can never be replaced.
, the protagonist Emma Lou arrives in Los Angeles to attend college at the University of Southern California. Having grown up in Idaho, she is eager to find a social world in which she will not be the only Black young woman. Among her delights is visiting Bruce’s Beach. She is thrilled: “The Pacific Ocean itself did not cause her heartbeat to quicken, nor did the roaring of its waves find an emotional echo within her.
Bruce’s Beach was a popular Black-owned resort in Manhattan Beach, near Los Angeles. Thurman, a Utah native, understood its significance for Black people on the West Coast. It was a sanctum, most comparable to Oak Bluffs, Cape May, and Sag Harbor on the East Coast, Idlewild in the Midwest, and Amelia Island in Florida—and its legacy is as complicated as it is glorious.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, exploiting Black labor and refusing the fullness of Black humanity were standard American practices. Black Angelenos, largely migrants from the South, were generally prevented from going to local beaches due to segregation and Jim Crow laws. When they did, they faced harassment, arrest, and assault. Black leisure, the kind afforded by Bruce’s Beach, was therefore not only a way to experience some relaxation, it was also a place for escape, for joy.
Willa Bruce bought the first 33-by-105-foot parcel of land in 1912, shortly after moving to California in pursuit of the American dream. Her husband, Charles, worked as a chef for train dining cars on the route between Salt Lake City and Los Angeles. It was a well-respected profession that accorded them middle-class status. As her husband traveled often for work, Willa managed the property. They were both strivers. He was born in Washington, D.C., and she in Missouri, both in the early 1860s.
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