The Klan’s harassment of the Bruces predated and failed at their dispossession.

Evidence

In 1912 Charles and Willa Bruce purchased beachfront property on Manhattan Beach in southern California for $1,225. They eventually turned their plots into a popular resort destination called Bruce’s Lodge, for black families who were denied access to other beaches because they were black. When Willa and her husband became property owners, they emboldened other black families to buy land and build cottages by the beach. The white residents of Manhattan Beach, however, did not welcome this change. To them, the black Americans moving into their neighborhood were part of a “national problem” that was abruptly brought to their doorstep. The white residents in Manhattan Beach were determined to solve it by any means necessary. “Visitors’ tires were frequently slashed, phony ‘10 Minute Only’ parking signs were erected to cause inconvenience, and the Ku Klux Klan set a fire on the Bruces’ property and burned a cross near the house of a Black neighbor.” — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 344

Categorization

• SHARE: The detail that the Bruce family’s beach served Black Pullman porters specifically is a narrow, delightful tidbit for anyone interested in Black labor history or the history of leisure.
• XREF: connects to: Threats and Klan intimidation failed to stop black-home-selling whites. — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 153