by Mark McDermott and Elka Worner
Ancestors loom larger in some families than in others. A bus pulled up to Bruce’s Beach Park two Saturday mornings ago, and 38 people disembarked, including 23 descendents, representing four generations, of a family that once lived on this land. In a very real sense, George and Ethel Prioleau had returned home for the first time in nearly a century.
The family was led by matriarch Anna King Gonzales, a granddaughter of the Prioleuas who grew up hearing the tragic tale of what had occurred in Manhattan Beach, and whose own activism last year, at the age of 90, helped inspire an official apology from the City of Manhattan Beach.
“Our grandparents provided us a beginning,” Gonzales said, standing where the Prioleau cottage once stood. “This was a part of their beginning. And we are now able to experience what they went through as the history of our family.”
Neither Major George Prioleau nor Ethel were people to shy from an uphill fight.
Few men ever fought harder for the American dream than George Washington Prioleau. He was born a slave in South Carolina in 1856, but later earned his theology degree and rose to prominence, in Ohio, as a professor and a pastor. He was a chaplain for the 9th Cavalry, the all-Black regiment that would famously become known as “Buffalo soldiers.” Near the end of the century, he saw his comrades return from the Spanish-American War, a grueling campaign in which they’d performed heroically and suffered enormous losses, and take part in parades in which they were spit upon in towns where they were not allowed to eat in the diners. Prioleau refused to remain silent. From within the ranks of the U.S. Army, Prioleau emerged as an outspoken critic of the racism and segregation his troops endured.
Later, after the Prioleaus made an epic journey west and became prominent members of a historical, pioneering African Americans’ middle class in Los Angeles, it would have been easy to finally rest. Instead, in 1919, the Prioleaus became the first family to join Willa and Charles Bruce in Manhattan Beach, building a cottage near the Bruce’s Beach resort, knowing full well that they, like the Bruces, would face hostility from some residents who feared African-American’s presence would hinder the fledgling city’s progress. And indeed, within a decade the Prioleaus, like the Bruces, would eventually be deprived of their property on the beach when the City of Manhattan Beach utilized the power of eminent domain to force five Black families to leave.
Though the term did not exist yet, the Prioleaus had come to Manhattan Beach as part of a nascent Civil Rights movement. Simply living at the beach was a statement for Black citizens at that time, and though they lost their land, the stand they made helped inspire NAACP’s successful fight to open Southern California beaches to Black people.
The beach represented the apex of a free life. And so this battlefront had an added importance.
“From the standpoint of African Americans during that time period, being able to control their destiny as relates to space, and what they wanted to do with their time when they weren’t working was important when you had all of these white folks who were trying to deny you of your rights,” said historian Alison Rose Jefferson in an interview two years ago regarding this early civil rights movement. “This was important in terms of thinking about your value as a human being, and your human dignity. And so these places were places of challenging white supremacy and contesting poor treatment.”
Jefferson is the author of the book, Living the California Dream: African American Leisure Sites during the Jim Crow Era, where she tells the Bruce’s Beach and other stories about leisure development efforts by the Black community.
On Saturday, when the descendants of the Prioleaus came to Bruce’s Beach, for most of them, it was the very first time they stepped foot in Manhattan Beach.
“To have been removed by eminent domain, it left a void,” Gonzales said. “And now we’re trying to put everything together.”
This is part of what an accurate and inclusive telling of history helps achieve. The Manhattan Beach City Council struggled mightily with that history over the past three years, but Bruce’s Beach Park now features a new plaque whose language more accurately renders the history of what occurred at the site — relative to a former plaque erected in 2007 that presented a skewed history — and includes reference to the Prioleaus and the other families who lived there, as well as other Black families who lived adjacently. En route to the park, the family drove by the original Prioleau cottage, which has been relocated to 25th and Bayview a few blocks north. They spent over an hour at Bruce’s Beach, where they congregated for lunch. Afterwards, the family would visit the Prioleaus´ main family home on 35th Place in Los Angeles and the site of the church their grandfather helped found, the Bethel AME Church.
They were met at Bruce’s Beach by Mayor Pro Tem Joe Franklin, who presented them with the City Council’s resolution of apology.
“The City directly apologizes to these former property owners for unjustly taking their property under false pretenses,” the resolution read.
Franklin, who’d voted against the apology, nevertheless said he was grateful to be a part of this historic day.
“I was pleased to be a part of this healing process,” he said. “And I was honored to meet with the Prioleau family descendants. It was important to acknowledge our past while moving forward with dignity and respect.”
Susan Lewis, a great grandchild of the Prioleaus, said simply stepping foot in the park and seeing the plaque had great meaning. It felt like joining her family’s history.
“In a way, I think, it’s not only history in the making for me to be a part of this special event, but it just shows on behalf of my family, what my great grandparents went through,” Lewis said. “And just the work it took for my cousin to put all this together, and just for us to get this done, it’s a blessing. And it’s history.”
“It means a lot, first of all, to have everybody come together in one place, and of course, to have the city acknowledge the history, the family, the property with Bruce’s Beach,” said David Patton. “And I think it all comes together and ties into a really emotional aspect that is kind of a full circle feeling.”
“And of course, it also adds into the historical fact that we’ve come a long way, as a people, as a family, and it’s all on the record now,” Patton said. “Emotionally, that’s satisfying to me. It’s a really good feeling.”
His mother, Patricia “Pepi” Patton, who alongside her cousin, Anna Gonzales, helped keep the flame alive regarding her family’s history at Bruce’s Beach, said this was a moment of pride.
“We are so proud of our grandparents,” she said. “They were pioneers on several levels. For civil rights and justice, they fought hard to have this property. I’m just so proud of them.”
The family originally sought justice not only in an acknowledgement and an apology, but in the form of reparations. The Bruce family made history when Los Angeles County returned the historical site of their resort and later paid them $20 million for the land, where lifeguard headquarters now exist. But the County does not own the adjacent park, and the City had neither the resources nor the desire to make financial restitution.
Patricia Patton said her family’s lot was much smaller, so it’s worth would be less. “But just look at that view,” she said. “It speaks for itself.”
She and the rest of the family were nevertheless at peace with the outcome.
“Our little lot meant a lot to our grandparents, and it still means a lot to us today,” she said. “It’s humbling to be here. It just gives me goosebumps thinking about them.”
Her granddaughter, Nyah Toomes, said learning the story of Bruce’s Beach, and now more directly experiencing it, had changed her. She said it made her feel stronger.
“For me, in the younger generation, it’s like tying me back to my roots and making me understand my history, my ancestors, and what they went through,” said Toomes, who is 23 years old. “It’s a part of me now. Their history is a part of why I’m here, and it means more to me because all of those things that happened. I’m taking that with me…I’m taking those experiences, even though they weren’t my personal experiences, and applying them to my life and moving forward with resilience. Knowing my history, it empowers me as a person.”
This is what Anna King Gonzales hoped for, both in pressing the City for an apology, and in organizing the tour.
“As the Pioleau family matriarch, it was very important to me to pass on, especially to the youngest generation. the important legacy that Major Reverend George and Ethel Prioleau have left us,” she said.
Gonzales said the family still felt some regret that this “journey for justice” for what her grandparents lost did not conclude with any reparation, they also feel a sense of accomplishment, in having procured an apology, not only on behalf of the Prioleaus, but also the other Black families who were forced from Bruce’s Beach.
“Also, we are pleased that the legacy of Major Rev. George and Ethel Prioleau is now “set in stone” in Manhattan Beach, California on two separate plaques,” she said. “All their descendants are now proud to carry their torch for justice with honor and courage.” ER
