George Fatheree represented the Bruce family in a landmark 2022 case that restored Bruce’s Beach property back to the family. The City of Manhattan Beach in 1924 had used eminent domain to seize Bruce’s Beach and the property of other Black families under the pretense of building a city park.
Fatheree argues in an April 27 guest opinion piece in the San Francisco Chronicle that Piedmont needs to go beyond a memorial and consider a real act of reparation for what the Dearing family lost when Sidney and Irene Dearing were driven from their Piedmont home in 1924.
Piedmont now faces a choice. The city is committed to erecting a memorial, budgeting nearly $500,000 to build a sculpture in a local park. But a memorial cannot compensate for a century of lost equity. Since the harm was economic, the remedy must be as well. Governments have tools to settle these debts, like returning property, providing compensation and/or creating a reparative fund.
Piedmont should do more than memorialize the Black homeowners it violently forced out, April 27, 2026
Full opinion HERE
He’s right. A memorial should just be phase 1.