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2024
Alta: Poetic Injustice
On July 15, 1958, five of the seven members of Santa Monica’s city council assembled in their second-floor chambers in City Hall, where floor-to-ceiling windows overlooked a landscaped courtyard. A city official initiated the proceedings with the Pledge of Allegiance: “…one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
Sacramento Bee: California reparations bills clear first state Senate hearings. ‘It’s what is owed’
Reparations bills to fund reparations policy and tackle past racially motivated eminent domain that took property from and displaced Black Californians sailed through their first hearings this week at the state Capitol.
Nonprofit Quarterly: Where Is My Land? The Struggle for Black Land Recovery
Working in the land reparations space can sometimes feel like a Sisyphean struggle—and healing collective wounds can be harrowing. There are, however, some halting steps forward.
Atlanta Black Star: Santa Monica’s Ebony Beach Club: The City Took His Land to Build a Parking Lot That Never Was, Now Silas White’s Descendants Are Fighting to Reclaim the Stolen Land and Dream
Ninety-year-old Connie White says her father, Silas White, always wanted to do something for his Black community in Santa Monica, California.
Sister's Letter: Don’t Assume Big Mama's House Will Stay in the Family
Billions in African Americans’ generational wealth has been seized or sold off using red tape, racist policies and property tax penalties. Protect what’s yours.
NBC: Descendants of Black entrepreneur call on Santa Monica to return family's land
If every corner in Los Angeles County has a story, then the tale of one property at Ocean Avenue and Pico Boulevard in Santa Monica has been buried underneath the Viceroy Hotel for decades.
Revolt: 7 reparations ideas for Black America
Though no amount is enough to account for what Black Americans have faced, here are 7 reparations ideas to ensure that they are rightfully recompensed.
Los Angeles Times: Column: What if Bruce’s Beach was just the start? Why more stolen land is about be returned
With polls continuing to show the public’s deep dislike of reparations, it’s easy to forget that it was only three years ago that elected officials were all in, pointing to what many had quietly thought would be a one-off as a model for righting the wrongs of systemic racism.
KCRW: Ebony Beach Club: Will Silas White’s descendants get restitution?
A year has passed since LA County returned a strand of Manhattan Beach waterfront property to the descendants of the Bruce family. Known as Bruce’s Beach, the land was taken from the family nearly 100 years ago through eminent domain.
High Country News: Black entrepreneurs built beach havens in California. Racism shut them down.
A year has passed since LA County returned a strand of Manhattan Beach waterfront property to the descendants of the Bruce family. Known as Bruce’s Beach, the land was taken from the family nearly 100 years ago through eminent domain.
smdp: Council votes to research a resolution to the Silas White property controversy
The City of Santa Monica has formally begun the process to return land once owned by a Black entrepreneur, or at least compensate the family for the loss of their property.
ESSENCE: Descendants Of A Black Entrepreneur Are Fighting To Reclaim Their Family’s Land In Santa Monica
In 1957, Silas White, a Black entrepreneur purchased a valuable plot of land in Santa Monica, CA. White wanted to transform “the space into the Ebony Beach Club, a place where the local Black community could come together and socialize during a time when such establishments were few and far between,” NBC Los Angeles reported.
Sacramento Bee: California to spend millions on reparations programs. Do Black advocates think it’s enough?
Black advocates are in agreement following last weekend’s announcement that the state will earmark $12 million over the next year to launch reparations — the money is a good start, but not nearly enough.
2023
The New York Times: A New Front in Reparations: Seeking the Return of Lost Family Land
Black families lost millions in wealth when their lands were seized through eminent domain. Now some are trying to get it back.
KQED: How Black Californians Had Their Land Stolen
Kavon Ward lived in Manhattan Beach, a surfside city about 15 miles southwest of Los Angeles, for more than two years before she learned about the city’s racist history.
BET Networks: LL Cool J Talks G.O.A.T. Level Status & Ed Gordon Discusses Reparations! | America In Black
America in Black" is a groundbreaking monthly newsmagazine presenting the most compelling stories in Black America. #AmericaInBlack #BET
KALW: What should reparations for Black communities look like in California?
On this edition of Your Call, we discuss reparations for Black communities in California. In late June, the California Reparations Task Force presented a proposal to the state Legislature with recommendations on how California can redress over a century of injustice towards African Americans.
DW News: Can reparations solve the racial wealth gap? | DW News
How can the US pay up for slavery? People are talking about reparations to try to narrow the vast wealth gap separating black and white Americans. And yet polls show most people are against the idea.
PBS: Movement to return land taken from Black and Indigenous people in the U.S. gains momentum
As cities and states across the country consider various forms of reparations, California has led the way in returning land to the descendants of the dispossessed. This includes African Americans and Native Americans. But as Stephanie Sy reports, the wealth, the community and the opportunities lost are not easily recovered.
19th News: Lorraine Hansberry’s family says Chicago’s racist policies seized their land. Now they’re seeking reparations.
Nearly 65 years after the Broadway playwright’s property lawsuit against the city, her family is continuing the fight to reclaim not only their land, but their legacy.
Yahoo: Column: Bruce’s Beach was a win for reparations. Why it matters that Black people lost it
Kavon Ward vividly remembers the sunny day in September of 2021 when she won. When Black people won. Gov. Gavin Newsom had traveled to the overwhelmingly white city of Manhattan Beach to sign legislation that would return two lots of prime real estate to the family of a Black couple who lost it in a racist act of government seizure almost a century ago.
Good Morning America: These Black and Latino citizens had land taken from them. Now, they want reparations
In the late 1950s, Russell City was home to many people of color. That is, until they were forced to leave. ABC News' Steve Osunsami sat down with the families now fighting for reparations.
The New York Times: L.A. County to Pay $20 Million for Land Once Seized From Black Family
California officials seized a beachfront property from Willa and Charles Bruce in 1924. Los Angeles County returned it to their great-grandsons last year. Now they’re selling it back.
Scripps News: Family To Sell Bruce's Beach Back To Los Angeles County For $20M
On a strip of beachfront land near Los Angeles, what many hope will be a nationwide rectification has begun. The family of Charles and Willa Bruce, robbed generations ago of a plot of land they owned, plans to sell it back to Los Angeles County for $20 million.
Washington Post: After regaining its seized land, a Black family will sell it to L.A. County
Entrepreneurs Charles and Willa Bruce had a vision for the small stretch of Southern California coastline they’d purchased in 1912: to create a resort for Black beachgoers where they wouldn’t be turned away.
NBC Los Angeles: Bruce's Beach Officially Sold Back to LA County for $20 Million
The sale of Bruce’s Beach from the Bruce family to LA county becomes official Monday in a culmination of a victory won after a long fight to return the beach back to its owners. As this sale becomes official, critics say the Bruce’s had every right to do what they with their property, but they also say there are ways they could have helped themselves— and the big picture.
CNN: Seized beach property to be returned to Black family almost 100 years later
For the first time in Los Angeles County's history, they are returning property that was owned by a Black family to the heirs 98 years after it was seized.
KCAL News: Juneteenth observance sparks discussion about reparations
Rachel Kim reports from Manhattan beach on the founder and CEO of Where is My Land, Kavon Ward, who works to have land taken from Black people returned or get restitution.
2022
‘ELLE: Performative Advocacy Doesn’t Work’: Black Justice Leaders Talk Accountability and the Fight for Reparations
President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on Jan. 1, 1863, ordering that “all persons held as slaves” should “be free.” But some enslavers across the Deep South refused to comply, and many Black people remained in slavery—completely unaware of their new freedom. Finally, on June 19, 1865, Union soldiers in Galveston, Texas, delivered an order, announcing that Black Texans were free, a moment that would come to symbolize the end to chattel slavery.
2021
Forbes: Meet The Founders Of ‘Where Is My Land’ A Movement To Reclaim Stolen Black Land And Wealth
Since the racial reckoning spurred by George Floyd’s murder and the subsequent summer 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, the country has arguably grappled with the ongoing scourge of racism with more intensity and determination.
Washington Post: Advocates push nationwide movement for land return to Blacks after victory in California
MANHATTAN BEACH, Calif. — A Black family’s successful fight to reclaim a picturesque stretch of Southern California shoreline has ignited a national movement, with activists eyeing White-owned properties around the country they say rightfully belong to African Americans.
Atlanta Black Star: ‘Move from Symbolism to Substance’: Black Family Is Getting Back Stolen California Beachfront Property In First Step Toward Restoring Lost Generational Wealth
“It’s a scar on a family that will probably never go away even with the returning of the land and restitution, this will always be with this family,” said Chief Duane ‘Yellow Feather’ Shepard, Bruce family spokesman and historian.
The Nation: “There Should Be No Statute of Limitations on Stolen Land”
On September 30, the California legislature passed Senate Bill 796, which made it possible for a government entity to return property that had been unjustly taken from Black property owners.
NPR: Landmark California bill could help Black families reclaim seized land
California has returned land to a Black family after it was seized decades ago. The story of Bruce's Beach highlights the loss of generational wealth and property that's happened across the country.
NBC News: After California moves to return Bruce's Beach to Black family, a push to recover other seized land
LOS ANGELES — With the flick of a pen Thursday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom codified the return of prime beachfront property in Southern California to the descendants of a Black couple who were stripped of their land and driven out by the Ku Klux Klan nearly 100 years ago.
Daily Breeze: Justice for Bruce’s Beach leader launches national project to reclaim Black families’ land
Kavon Ward started a movement to return Bruce’s Beach to its original owners. Ashanti Martin had been planning on a project to help Black families throughout the country get their land back.
The Grio: Beyond Bruce’s Beach: Now is the time to reclaim Black people’s land
With racial justice on our minds and in the public conscience, it is time to decide what that justice will look like, and what it should look like. For Black and Indigenous people who have experienced historic loss, reparations and restorative justice must be a part of the solution. And this includes land; land that white supremacy stole from us by means of duplicity, violence, eminent domain and the machinations of the legal system.