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Get a closer look at the history of Bruce’s Beach through an exhibit at the California African American Museum at Exposition Park in Los Angeles. Historian Alison Rose Jefferson, author of the book “ Living the California Dream: African American Leisure Sites during the Jim Crow Era ,” curated the exhibit, “Black California Dreamin’: Claiming Space at America’s Leisure Frontier ,” out of her research and collections on Bruce’s Beach in Manhattan Beach and other historically Black leisure sites around the state. It runs through Aug.

18. Bruce’s Beach in Manhattan Beach was once a seaside resort for African American people on two parcels below the land that later became Bruce’s Beach Park. Manhattan Beach leadership in the late 1920s used eminent domain to take that land from the Black owners — Willa and Charles Bruce–as well as the homes of others, whose properties were on what’s now the parkland.



That land was deeded back to descendants of the Bruce family who eventually sold it back to Los Angeles County . On display at Jefferson’s exhibit are historical photos including private collection photographs of Bruce’s Beach shown publicly for the first time, details about the histories of the Black California leisure sites like Eureka Villa — now known as Val Verde — a resort community in the Santa Clarita Valley that a group of Black Angelenos built in 1924 for African American people who were restricted from owning land or recreating elsewhere, .

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