In 1924, city officials in Manhattan Beach, Calif., seized beachfront property from the Bruce family, the Black owners of the only resort open to Blacks in Southern California. The action drove the Bruces’ resort out of business and the family and their patrons out of town.
Bruce’s Beach
A Victory for Black Reparations
In 2022, the county of Los Angeles, then the owner of the land, agreed to return the property to the Bruces’ descendants. Rise Communications, which the Bruce family’s law firm had retained before the transaction, developed a media campaign positioning the return of Bruce’s Beach as much more than a local or even statewide story. Rather, it became the nation’s first case of successful reparations to a Black family.
The campaign advanced the national conversation around intergenerational Black wealth and secured national and international headlines and television appearances. Among organizations reporting the story were the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, the Guardian, NPR, PBS, Reuters, Condé Nast Traveler and CNN.com.