In this week's In Focus: SoCal, host Tanya McRae celebrates Black History Month, as well as African Americans' contributions and achievements in Southern California.
McRae speaks with Duane Shepard, a descendant of Willa and Charles Bruce, who opened up a beach resort in the 1900s for African Americans, since many beach areas were segregated. Bruce's Beach became a target of racism, and the Ku Klux Klan attacked it in the 1920s. The property was seized using eminent domain proceedings and turned into a park decades later in the 1960s. There is a petition now to get the city of Manhattan Beach to restore land rights and provide the Bruce family with restitution.
McRae also talks to Los Angeles City Councilman Marqueece Harris-Dawson about Destination Crenshaw's status, a 1.3-mile open-air museum along Crenshaw Boulevard that will celebrate and preserve Black history for years to come. The project, dedicated to hiring locally, is set to begin construction at the end of the month after a delay caused by the pandemic.
McRae then heads to Riverside County to sit down with Dr. Paulette Brown-Hinds, publisher of the the Black Voice News which was started by UC Riverside students five decades ago. The family-owned business is dedicated to giving a voice to the powerless and has become a trustworthy source of news in the Black community that focuses on social justice and advocacy.
San Bernardino City Councilman Ben Reynoso also joins the conversation to share his experience representing the 5th Ward as one of three African American councilmembers in the city.
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