“The Ink Well”

The beach near this site between Bay and Bicknell Streets, known by some as the Ink Well, remained an important gathering place for African Americans long after racial restrictions on public beaches were abandoned in 1927. African-American groups from Santa Monica, Venice, and Los Angeles, from as early as the 1920s to the end of the Jim Crow era in the 1950s, preferred to enjoy the sun and surf here because they encountered less racial harassment than at other Southland beaches. In the 1940s, Nick Gabaldon, a Santa Monica High School student and the first documented black surfer, taught himself how to surf here.

Santa Monica, California · United States