According to county officials, the descendants of Charles and Willa Bruce, the original landowners of Bruce’s Beach, plan to sell the oceanfront property back to Los Angeles County for almost $20 million.

Last July, LA County gave the land first owned by the couple back to their heirs as a reparation for the unjust actions taken by the city of Manhattan Beach to obtain the property nearly 100 years ago. The land is now worth millions, and the living relatives recently shared they decided to sell it back to the county, although the timing of the sale is unclear.

“The seizure of Bruce’s Beach nearly a century ago was an injustice inflicted upon not just Willa and Charles Bruce but generations of their descendants who almost certainly would have been millionaires,” Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors Chair Janice Hahn said in a statement.

Like many, the couple moved to the West Coast for new opportunities. Willa purchased the lot in Southern California at Manhattan Beach for $1,225. She and Charles wanted to create a safe place where Black tourists could stay during the Jim Crow era when visiting the Golden State. So they decided to build a popular resort on the land that gained a lot of business from Black travelers — but not without pushback from white residents living in the surrounding neighborhoods.

In 1924, racism pushed local real estate agents and others to start a petition that led Manhattan Beach City Council officials to take the land from the Bruces to build a park. Over the last few years, Willa and Charles’ descendants, activists, local officials and politicians have been fighting for justice to get the Bruce family what was rightfully theirs.

“This is what reparations look like, and it is a model I hope governments across the country will follow,” Hahn said in the statement.

Some believe the land is worth more than $20 million and think the Bruce family should renegotiate the price.

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