The Santa Monica City Council agreed earlier this week to pay a settlement to the family of a Black entrepreneur whose land the city acknowledged was unfairly taken through eminent domain during the 1950s.
More than 60 years later, the payment is part of a larger reparations effort by the city of Santa Monica.
On Tuesday, the City Council unanimously approved in closed session a $350,000 settlement for the family of Silas White, a Black businessman who leased a building on Ocean Avenue with the intention of buying it to open an exclusively Black hotel and beach club. Instead, the city took the property under the guise of building an auditorium nearby.
The mediation that led to settling a claim filed by White’s family was finalized in October. City Councilmember Caroline Toris, who worked closely on the case, said the city is working to set up other meaningful reparations for Black residents harmed by its racist past.
“I hate to say this but the city of Santa Monica took a series of actions to deprive Black Americans of the opportunity of being in Santa Monica. Our history books show that systemic racism, oppression and discrimination happened,” Toris said. “We as a council made a decision, that despite the fact we’re facing a very challenging financial time, we want to dedicate funding because [a formal apology to the Black community] is great, but unless it comes with money and needful repair, it’s just an empty word.”
The decision to settle with the White family comes more than a year after his family first brought to light how the city crushed Silas’ dream of opening Ebony Beach Club at 1811 Ocean Ave. during the segregated 1950s.
Originally named the Elks Clubhouse, the property was empty 13 years prior to White’s plan for a grand opening, according to his daughter, Constance “Connie” White. Registered as a nonprofit corporation, the Ebony Beach Club was scheduled to open on Oct. 15, 1958, as advertised on signs posted outside the building.
The city, however, intervened, saying the land was needed as part of a plan to create the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium around the block, according to court records.
The club was subjected to a complaint for condemnation, also known as eminent domain, which allows the city to take private property for public use, according to a report by The Times in 1958. The parcels surrounding the club were empty, the report states.
At the time, White said the city was discriminating against his business because “the organization was primarily Negro.”
White, who did not own the land, had just begun making payments on the $200,000 price tag at the time. The agreement he had with the property owner, Bennett Dorsey, was to pay $2,700 per month for 15 years, with a second 15-year extension option, according to the city.
White paid one installment of $2,700 before the land was seized.
The city’s complaint to seize the property at the time named Dorsey as the club’s owner and the Dicksons, a family that loaned Dorsey money to make improvements to the property, according to the city.
In 1959, an L.A. County Superior Court judge awarded Dorsey $74,000 and the Dicksons $19,477, and said that Ebony Beach Club, Inc., had no right, title, interest or estate in the property, per court records. White never received any money for his interest in the building, his family claimed.
“I’m not doing this because of money,” Constance White said in a video posted to Instagram in 2024. “I’m doing this because of justice and for the future of all people. It’s not only my case. As you research, there’s thousands of people that have had this happen to them.”
Her father’s proposed club would have been located on what is now Vicente Terrace, a public street next to the upscale Viceroy Hotel. According to the city, about 5% of the hotel’s land sits on property once leased by White.
This is not the first time the city of Santa Monica has launched a reparations-style program. In 2021, the city started Right to Return, a pilot affordable housing initiative for residents who were forcibly removed due to the construction of the I-10 freeway and the civic center.
About 2,500 households were displaced from the Pico neighborhood and the Belmar Triangle, a predominantly Black neighborhood, due to the construction projects, Natasha Guest-Kingscote, administrator for the city of Santa Monica, told the Santa Monica Daily Press in 2022.
However, the applications for affordable housing were capped at 100. And only 11 families qualified, according to the Santa Monica Mirror. Toris said this program failed to provide considerable reparations.
“We were gonna prioritize people who wanted to get on our below-market affordable housing waitlist if they could show that their descendants were displaced from Santa Monica,” Toris said. “But we didn’t feel that was enough because that’s not giving anyone full financial repair, and so this [settlement] is the next step as we see it.”
As part of the settlement agreement, the city of Santa Monica plans to accept applications for a reparations program for Black residents but only for people 90 years old and older. The claims will be referred to as “White Claims,” per court records. Details about the program are still being developed, City Manager Oliver Chi told The Times.
Chi referred to this initiative as the “restorative justice program,” which will be introduced to City Council in January 2026. If the program is approved, it will be funded by a one-time payment of $3.5 million from a recent development agreement the city made with the Rand Corporation, he said.
“There is going to be details on how that money will be utilized to pursue a restorative justice program and so we are thinking we need to create some type of oversight commission, and a professional or mediator of sorts that can help develop programmatic terms and guide the commission in developing those terms,” Chi said. “We are working through details.”
Constance will be able to apply for this claim, per the settlement agreement. How the application process will work has yet to be disclosed.
Toris said the city will rename a portion of Vicente Terrace to Silas White Street and establish an exhibit dedicated to White inside the city’s Main Library. White’s family will help provide materials for the exhibit, per the settlement agreement. Silas White Day will be officially celebrated October 12.
Constance’s defense team did not immediately respond to a request for comment as of Friday.
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