MANHATTAN BEACH, Calif. — The Bruce family has successfully joined in the defense against a lawsuit seeking to prevent Los Angeles County from returning the family’s former beachfront resort property. The land was compelled from the Bruces, a Black family, in a racially-motivated eminent domain case nearly 100 years ago.

On Nov. 24, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge approved the family’s application to act as intervenors in a lawsuit, filed by Palos Verdes-area attorney Joseph Ryan, seeking to prevent LA County from transferring the land to the Bruce family descendants.

“A hundred years ago, certain folks did not want to see Charles and Willa Bruce own property in Manhattan Beach and it’s unfortunately not surprising that today, some of those same type of folks do not want to see the property returned to the Bruce family,” said George Fatheree, an attorney representing Derrick and Marcus Bruce, the great-grandchildren of Willa and Charles Bruce.

Ryan’s lawsuit argues that Los Angeles County oversteps its constitutional bounds by seeking to restore the land to the Bruce family.

Willa and Charles Bruce’s Manhattan Beach resort, known as Bruce’s Lodge, spurred the growth of Black community in the young city more than 100 years ago. But in the 1920s, the Manhattan Beach Board of Trustees compelled the Bruces to sell their land through eminent domain under the guise of developing a park. Four other Black families were also compelled to sell, as were a handful of white landowners. Only the Black property owners had made improvements to their land at the time of the city’s action.

Decades later, a former city trustee would acknowledge that the eminent domain action was taken because trustees thought “the Negro problem was going to stop our progress.”

Though the land’s history would later be acknowledged by the city, a movement to return the family’s land only began in earnest in 2020, when social justice advocates, like Justice for Bruce’s Beach founder Kavon Ward, brought the issue to public consciousness. This fall, leaders at the state and county levels drove legislation allowing Los Angeles County, which currently controls the Bruce’s former land, to restore the property to the family.

“When the City of Manhattan Beach took the Bruce’s property, that action had real and devastating consequences for real people — it altered the socio-economic trajectory of my client’s family for generations,” Fatheree said.

As of this writing, Ryan has not yet responded to a request for comment.

The next hearing in this lawsuit is scheduled for Jan. 31, 2022.