Elgin Nelson, Staff
Willis O. Tyler Square became the first intersection in the history of Los Angeles dedicated to a Black person. Several members of Los Angeles’ black legal community gathered this week to unveil the historic sign alongside Councilmen Kevin de León.
The sign, located between 2nd and Spring Streets in downtown Los Angeles, has the following: “Willis O. Tyler Square… A Civil Rights Attorney and Legal Trailblazer.”
The intersection aims to honor Tyler’s efforts in fighting landmark civil rights cases. His most notable case involved H.L. Garrott, a Black police officer racially targeted after he purchased a home in Angelus Vista, a historic neighborhood in central Los Angeles.
A deed presented against Garrott prohibited anyone to “lease or sell any portion of said premises to any person of African, Chinese or Japanese descent.” Tyler argued in favor of Garrott, accusing Title Guarantee & Trust Company of creating a racially restrictive covenant that violates 14th Amendment rights.
Willis O. Tyler also represented Willa and Charles Bruce in the unsuccessful legal action against the city of Manhattan Beach for Bruce’s Beach, a Black-owned resort. The city of Manhattan Beach took offense to this and implemented a racially motivated eminent domain on the property. Eminent domain is a government process to “strip or condemn property for public use without the landowner’s consent, upon just paying compensation.”
Attorney George Fatheree III, who was present at the unveiling, helped the Bruce family get $20 million for the land that was taken from them by the city of Manhattan Beach.
Tyler was born on July 19, 1880, in Bloomington, Illinois. Tyler was raised by an aunt who had been a leader in the Bloomington station of the Underground Railroad.
Tyler enrolled in Indiana University at age 16, where he studied for two years before enlisting in the Indiana Colored Volunteer Infantry to fight in Cuba in the Spanish-American War. He received a bachelor’s degree from Indiana University in 1902 and graduated from Harvard Law School in 1908.
Tyler died on June 18, 1949, at age 68 at his home in Harvard Heights after practicing law in Los Angeles for more than 35 years.