by Mark McDermott Legislation crafted to pave the way for the County of Los Angeles to return land in Manhattan Beach that belonged to Willa and Charles Bruce…
by Mark McDermott Legislation crafted to pave the way for the County of Los Angeles to return land in Manhattan Beach that belonged to Willa and Charles Bruce…
by Elka Worner Since starting her restorative justice work last year, community activist Kavon Ward has fielded calls from Black families from around the…
by Mark McDermott
A lot happened in 1961. John F. Kennedy was inaugurated as the 35th president of the United States, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to fly in space, the civil rights activists known as the Freedom Riders took buses into the South to challenge segregation, and East Germany began construction of the Berlin Wall.
Something historic also happened in Manhattan Beach, although its significance wouldn’t be apparent until much later. Jan Dennis moved to town. She and her husband, Stan, moved down the coast from Santa Monica, bringing with them their kids and a fledgling little business called JanStan Studios. And it was through that business that Dennis, over the course of the next six decades, became the greatest historian Manhattan Beach has yet known.
For one man and his family: Justice.
For the country: But one step in a larger journey toward racial justice, too long deferred.
Those were the reactions from Los Angeles Countyâs elected officials on Tuesday, April 20, in the wake of a Hennepin County jury finding former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin guilty of all three counts he faced â including murder â for killing George Floyd last year.
Floyd, a Black man, died May 25 when Chauvin kneeled on his neck for more than nine minutes. A crowd witnessed the killing. Smartphones captured it â and broadcast it across the world.
The countryâs latest reckoning with police brutality and systemic racism stretched into the summer.Â