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, memorabilia and contemporary artwork based on the history of such areas.
It’s all rooted in the “California dream” that African American people had to live thriving lives like their White counterparts could, including freely enjoying down time at the shore and in the ocean.
Access to nature, recreation, and sites of relaxation — or leisure — is critical to pursuing the full range of human experience, self-fulfillment, and dignity, according to a description of the exhibit on CAAM’s website. “Black California Dreamin’” illuminates Angelenos and other Californians who worked to make leisure here an open, inclusive reality in the first half of the 20th century when Southern California was becoming a hub for people to go fulfill the California and American dreams.
In shaping recreational sites and public spaces during the Jim Crow era, the summary reads, African Americans challenged white supremacy and situated Black identity within oceanfront and inland social gathering places throughout California.
The objects shown in the exhibit tell stories of self-determination, leadership, geographic and social mobility, beauty and gender standards, and cultural identity, according to the exhibit description. African Americans helped define the practice and meaning of leisure in California, it adds, as they faced emerging power politics around who gets access to naturescapes and other public spaces, setting the stage for these places as symbols of invention and sites of public struggles that still reverberate today.
There’s also a section about current events surrounding these sites, Jefferson said, like the creation of public policy to give Black property owners or their descendants back what was wrongfully taken from them in trying to build a decent livelihood.
Jefferson also continues to share Bruce’s Beach history with children who attend the Culture Club South Bay, a free month-long beach camp that runs in the spring and fall each year at Bruce’s Beach Park.
If you go
“Black California Dreamin’: Claiming Space at America’s Leisure Frontier” is on display through Aug. 18 at the California African American Museum, 600 State Dr., Los Angeles.
Jefferson will be on site from 7 to 11 p.m. on Friday, June 28 for KCRW Summer Nights at CAAM.