With California returning Bruce's Beach, a prime beachfront property, to the descendants of the Black couple it was taken from, there is a push to help Black families with similar stories reclaim what once belonged to them.
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.to allow the return of what was once a thriving coastal resort that catered to Black residents when racial segregation barred them from many beaches.
The same year, Willis won $500,000 gambling, said his sister Aundra Willis Carrasco. He used the money to expand his growing empire, which included the Jazz Temple, a legendary music venue that hosted titans like Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie and John Coltrane. The area surrounding Willis' former kingdom is now home to two very disparate realities. The Cleveland Clinic and University Circle, recently voted by USA Today as the top arts district in the country, both attract big money from philanthropic institutions and top donors. Yet even though it houses elite institutions, Cleveland became the"
As Willis’ fortune increased, so did the harassment, his sister said. He received death threats and kidnapping threats against his children, and there were “several attempts on his life,” according to Carrasco. Menacing phone calls and racial slurs were just the beginning. Two years after the Jazz Temple opened, it was destroyed in a bombing.
He was arrested in 1982 for writing a bad check and spent 10 days in solitary confinement, Carrasco said. While he was in jail, Willis' empire crumbled. He lost control of his final Cleveland property in 2000.
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