- Kimberley Guillemet
- Nov 1, 2021
In 1912, African-American entrepreneur Willa Bruce and her husband Charles moved from New Mexico to California and bought beachfront property in the strand area of Manhattan Beach for $1,225. Mrs. Bruce wanted to create an area where African Americans could enjoy the ocean. The couple established a resort and named it Bruce’s Beach in honor of Mrs. Bruce.
Under Mrs. Bruce’s leadership, the development included a bathhouse and dining house for African Americans, whose access to public beaches was highly restricted at the time. Before the establishment of Bruce’s Beach, African Americans were not permitted to access the beaches in that region because of racially discriminatory laws and real estate practices. Mrs. Bruce proclaimed to the Los Angeles Times in 1912: “Whenever we have tried to buy land for a beach resort we have been refused. But I own this land and I’m going to keep it.”
By 1920 African Americans who regularly frequented Bruce’s Beach and had moved into the neighborhood surrounding the beach were subjected to harassment by white neighbors and assault by Ku Klux Klan members who set fires or planted liquor on site during Prohibition to get them arrested. In 1924, the Manhattan Beach City Council initiated eminent domain proceedings claiming that Bruce’s Beach property was needed for a public park, despite having recently built Live Oak Park nearby. The Bruces sued the city, but unfortunately the resort was torn down. By 1929, the Bruces settled the case for much less than they had originally sought in the lawsuit. A park was not established until the late 1950s or early 1960s.
In 2006, due to the efforts of Manhattan Beach Councilman Mitch Ward, the city’s first African-American councilman, the property was officially renamed Bruce's Beach. After years of advocacy by the Bruce family descendants and community leaders, in April 2021, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to approve returning Bruce’s Beach to the family’s descendants. The property to be returned was estimated to be worth $75 million at the time. In June 2021, the California State Senate approved a bill to return the property to descendants of the Bruces. Legislation that prevented the county from transferring or selling the property was eliminated in September 2021 through the legislative approval process. California Governor Gavin Newsom signed the legislation later the same month.
Despite not having the land returned to her during her lifetime, Willa Bruce’s vision and entrepreneurship benefitted countless African American residents of her time. She was a trailblazer in the field of commercial real estate and her legacy lives on.
To read more about the life and legacy of Willa Bruce and Bruce’s Beach, please visit:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/11/us/bruce-family-manhattan-beach.html, and https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-tragic-history-of-las-black-family-beach-havens.
- Kimberley Guillemet
- Oct 1, 2021
Octavia Spencer was born in Montgomery, Alabama on May 25, 1970. She and her six siblings were raised by their mother, Dellsena Spencer, who worked as a maid. Her father died when she was thirteen.
Early on Spencer realized that she had a learning difference. She has recounted being fearful of reading aloud in class from a very young age. “I was paralyzed with fear because I kept inverting words and dropping words. I didn’t want to be made to feel that I was not as smart as the other kids—because I [knew that I was] a smart person.” Spencer would later be diagnosed with dyslexia, a learning disability.
Despite the challenges she faced with reading, Spencer’s drive and determination catapulted her forward. She credits her mother for keeping her grounded and positive as a child, which was especially helpful when school was challenging. She learned that she had strengths that many of her classmates did not have. She could solve puzzles quicker than her peers and was an incredibly strong auditory learner. Her teachers took notice of her strong deductive reasoning skills and auditory strengths, and ultimately, she was tested and placed in her school’s gifted program.
In high school, Spencer dreamed of working in television and film production. When she learned about a film being shot nearby, she applied for an on-set internship. But applying was not enough for Spencer. She called everyday to inquire about the job. And once she located the production team’s offices, she showed up everyday to reiterate her interest. Her persistence paid off and at 16 years old, she landed her first film job as an intern.
After graduating from Jefferson Davis High School in 1988, she went on to Auburn University, where she majored in English with a double minor in journalism and theater.
Today, Spencer has achieved international acclaim as an actor. Her acting career has spanned more than 20 years, but she is best known for her more recent roles. Some of her films include Hidden Figures, Insurgent, Zootopia and The Help. She’s received many awards, including a Golden Globe and an Oscar.
Spencer is also an author of children’s books and has created and written a book series for middle school students called The Ninja Detective series.
More recently, Spencer fulfilled her childhood dream of working in production when she added the role of producer to her list of achievements.
Even with all of her achievements, Spencer remains humble and true to herself.
“I was a dyslexic child and am a dyslexic adult,” she has said. “That doesn’t really mean that you’re not intelligent—it just means that your brain functions differently.”
Spencer hopes that young people who struggle with any kind of issue won’t give up on their dreams. She has said, “It doesn’t matter your situation in life; your path is what you choose it to be.”
To read more about this inspiring world changer, please visit:
https://www.understood.org/articles/en/celebrity-spotlight-dyslexia-cant-stop-octavia-spencers-success and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octavia_Spencer#Early_life. To view footage about her successful career, visit: https://youtu.be/EYhZA454fcE.
- Kimberley Guillemet
- Sep 1, 2021
Geraldine “Jerrie” Lawhorn was a leader in the American deafblind community, a performer, actress, pianist, and an instructor. She was also the first deafblind African American person to earn a college degree in the United States.
Ms. Lawhorn was born on December 31, 1916, in Dayton, Ohio, to musicians Pearl Walker and William Bert Lawhorn. She was about eight years old when doctors discovered she had an eye condition. Shortly thereafter, Ms. Lawhorn learned Braille, but remained in classes with sighted students. Her integration at school was challenging in that her classmates booed, stigmatized, and discriminated against her.
Despite this adversity, Ms. Lawhorn persisted with her education, graduating with honors from Marshall High School. Upon graduating, Ms. Lawhorn became interested in writing and public speaking and won several prizes for her short stories.
At 19 years old, Ms. Lawhorn completely lost her hearing which prompted her to learn a new mode of communication: the One-Hand Alphabet. She did not allow this new challenge to deter her from writing. In fact, she continued entering and winning writing contests. She took a course at Columbia University and then went on to write a novel entitled The Needle Swingers' Baby.
In 1942, Ms. Lawhorn was admitted to the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago, where she studied for four years. She performed monologues at the United Service Organization’s programs. She launched a one-woman show entitled Projected Hearts, and performed at Carnegie Hall.
After years as a performer, Ms. Lawhorn was offered a teaching position at the Hadley Institute for the Blind and Visually Impaired. She would serve as an instructor for the Hadley Institute for over 40 years.
Obtaining a college degree was a lifelong goal for Ms. Lawhorn, but she had encountered incredible discrimination related to her disabilities and ethnicity whenever she had attempted to achieve this goal in the past. Through a friend, she learned about the University Without Walls program that many colleges offered. She applied to this program and was accepted at Northeastern Illinois University.
On March 23, 1983, Ms. Lawhorn earned her Bachelor's Degree in Rehabilitation of Deafblind Adults from Northeastern Illinois University. At the age of 67, she became the first deafblind African American person to graduate from college. She became only the sixth deafblind person in the United States to earn that achievement.
Ms. Lawhorn was featured on several nationwide television shows in celebration of her achievements. She was known for her optimism, tenacity and encouragement of deafblind people. In 1991, she wrote her autobiography entitled On Different Roads, which was a source of inspiration for the 2005 movie Black by Sanjay Leela Bhansali.
To learn more about Ms. Lawhorn’s enduring life and legacy, please visit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geraldine_Lawhorn and: https://chicago.suntimes.com/2016/7/7/18325421/geraldine-lawhorn-author-performer-teacher-deaf-blind-pioneer and: https://ps-af.facebook.com/HeritASL/videos/geraldine-Ms. Lawhorn-lawhorn/635082203940072/.
