BRUCE, Blanche Kelso, a Senator from Mississippi; born in slavery near Farmville, Prince Edward County, Va., March 1, 1841; was tutored by his master's son; left his master at the beginning of the Civil War; taught school in Hannibal, Mo.; after the war became a planter in Mississippi; member of the Mississippi Levee Board; sheriff and tax collector of Bolivar County 1872-1875; elected as a Republican to the United States Senate on February 4, 1874, and served from March 4, 1875, to March 3, 1881; was the first African American to serve a full term in the United States Senate; appointed Register of the Treasury by President James Garfield 1881; recorder of deeds for the District of Columbia 1891-1893; again Register of the Treasury from 1897 until his death in Washington, D.C., on March 17, 1898; interment in Woodlawn Cemetery.
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Blanche K. Bruce was the second African American to serve in the U.S. Senate and the first to serve a full six-year term. Born enslaved, Bruce rose quickly in Mississippi politics during Reconstruction. He later became a successful planter and was well-connected in politics and society in Washington, DC. In the Senate, Bruce was an advocate for Black civil and political rights as well as federal investment in the economic development of Mississippi. He was also the first Black Member of Congress to preside over the Senate and the first appointed to chair a congressional committee.
Blanche Bruce was born near Farmville, Virginia, on March 1, 1841. He was the son of an enslaved woman named Polly Bruce and the man who enslaved her, Pettus Perkinson. Polly Bruce had formerly been enslaved by Perkinson’s father-in-law, Lemuel Bruce. Blanche Bruce’s first name was originally “Branch,” but he changed it to “Blanche” as a teenager. He later chose the middle name “Kelso.” Bruce’s father kept him enslaved for the entirety of his childhood and young adulthood. In the decades leading up to the Civil War, Perkinson moved Bruce and his family west to Chariton County, Missouri, in 1844, before relocating to Mississippi in 1849. There, Bruce was forced to work in the cotton fields for a year before Perkinson decided to return to Missouri. Bruce lived for the next 12 years in the town of Brunswick, where he was hired out by Perkinson and did a range of jobs from carpentry to farm labor.1
When the war began, Bruce escaped to Lawrence, Kansas—a haven for abolitionists before the war. Bruce had been accorded a range of privileges by his father while enslaved, including access to education, and in Lawrence he taught at a local school in the small free Black community. In 1863, he narrowly escaped a Confederate guerrilla attack on Lawrence that killed more than 140 residents. Near the end of the war, he moved to Hannibal, Missouri, and organized the state’s first school for Black students in 1864. Determined to get a formal education, Bruce attended Oberlin College in Ohio in 1866. By 1867, he lacked the funds to continue studying and decided to return to Missouri, where he worked as a steamboat porter out of St. Louis on the Mississippi River.2
After visiting Mississippi and witnessing a stump speech by Republican gubernatorial candidate James Lusk Alcorn, Bruce was inspired to enter politics and moved to the state in 1869. He quickly became part of the Republican campaign operation that year, speaking to large crowds in Black communities. Bruce was appointed registrar of voters in Tallahatchie County by the district military commander, General Adelbert Ames, a Republican who was elected to represent Mississippi in the U.S. Senate in 1870. Bruce was elected sergeant at arms of the state senate when the reconstituted Mississippi state legislature convened for the first time in late 1870. The following year, he was elected to the joint office of sheriff and tax collector of Bolivar County, and by 1872 the Republican state board of education appointed him county superintendent of education. Bruce’s attention to costs, employment of local Black teachers rather than northern emigrants, and efficient administration of the system won wide support, even from White planters. Bruce invested in land and property in Floreyville, Mississippi, becoming a successful planter by the late 1870s. In 1872, he was named to the board of levee commissioners for a district containing three counties. The commissioners were empowered to raise revenue and build embankments in the Mississippi Delta region.3
By the mid-1870s, Blanche Bruce was among the most renowned Republican politicians in the state. The 1873 gubernatorial contest pitted then-Senator Ames against Alcorn, who had been elected to the U.S. Senate in 1871. During the campaign, Ames offered Bruce the position of lieutenant governor. Bruce refused, instead maneuvering for the Senate seat to be vacated by the victor. When Ames won and resigned in January 1874, the state legislature decided to choose two candidates for the Senate—one for Ames’s unexpired term ending on March 3, 1875, and another for a full six-year term beginning in the 44th Congress (1875–1877). Henry Roberts Pease was chosen for the short term, while Bruce was nominated to serve the full term primarily because of the backing of Black Republicans, who were a majority in the party caucus and preferred Bruce to Representative George Colin McKee and U.S. district attorney Guilford Wiley Wells. The full legislature elected Bruce nearly unanimously on February 4, 1874.4
When Bruce arrived in the U.S. Senate Chamber on March 5, 1875, tradition called for the senior Senator from his home state to escort him to the podium. Senator Alcorn snubbed the Senator-elect because of Bruce’s support for Governor Ames. Bruce walked up the aisle alone until Republican Senator Roscoe Conkling of New York offered to escort him. Thereafter Bruce had a powerful ally in Conkling, who helped the new Senator secure desirable committee assignments, including the Committee on Education and Labor, the Committee on Manufactures, and the Committee on Pensions.5
Bruce was only 34 when he joined the Senate, which made him the second-youngest Senator behind 33-year-old Stephen Wallace Dorsey of Arkansas. Four years later, when Dorsey’s term expired, Bruce was the youngest Senator in the 46th Congress (1879–1881). Arriving in the Senate without the experience of serving in the state legislature, Bruce astutely determined that “success depended to some extent on personal conduct,” and he took a diplomatic approach to building relationships with his colleagues, “to cultivate and exhibit my honorable associates a courtesy that would inspire reciprocal courtesy.”6
On March 3, 1876, Bruce delivered his maiden speech in the Senate. The Senator from Mississippi petitioned his colleagues to seat P.B.S. Pinchback, the African-American Senator-elect from Louisiana—and a personal friend. The Senate had refused to seat Pinchback because of ongoing claims that the Republican-led legislature that took office in January 1873 was the product of a disputed election in 1872. Bruce noted that if Congress had not acted to settle this dispute in the ensuing three years—and had welcomed other Members elected during this period—how could the Senate deny Pinchback his seat? Despite the backing of Bruce and other Republicans, the Senate ultimately rejected Pinchback’s claim to the seat.7
On March 31, Bruce spoke in favor of a proposed investigation into election violence in Mississippi in 1875. He described the “flagrant wrongs” perpetrated against Black voters in the state as undermining representative government and denying the civil and political rights of African Americans. Bruce denounced the violence in Mississippi as “an attack by an aggressive, intelligent, white political organization upon inoffensive, law-abiding fellow citizens; a violent method for political supremacy, that seeks not the protection of the rights of the aggressors, but the destruction of the rights of the party assailed.” While Black Mississippians had become influential in state politics, he added, they could not be accused of using “our newly acquired power as a sword of attack and not as a shield of defense.” He included in his remarks statistics demonstrating the “hopeful progress” of African Americans in his home state, highlighting the increase in marriages, property ownership, population, and the establishment of businesses. For Bruce, these model citizens deserved the enforcement of existing law to protect their individual rights. Ultimately, a Senate select committee produced a two-volume report on the 1875 Mississippi elections that chronicled violence, intimidation, and a coordinated Democratic effort to stop Black voters from casting their ballots.8
Bruce skillfully used his platform as a U.S. Senator to bolster his influence in Republican politics. He chaired the Mississippi delegation to the 1876 Republican National Convention and campaigned for the nominee, Rutherford B. Hayes, in Mississippi and Louisiana. During the administration of President Hayes, Bruce worked closely with two Black Mississippi Republicans, former Representative John R. Lynch and secretary of state James Hill, to garner federal appointments for White and Black allies of the state Republican Party.9
Bruce was also an advocate for African Americans in the U.S. military and the interests of Black war veterans. On April 11, 1878, he spoke in favor of a bill to end discrimination in the military enlistment process, opening all branches of the service to Black soldiers. Two years later, Bruce urged the Senate to pass a resolution calling for the Secretary of War to investigate the brutal hazing of Black West Point cadet Johnson C. Whittaker.10
Throughout his term in office Bruce fought to ensure the government issued long overdue backpay to Black soldiers and sailors for their service in the Civil War. The first bill he introduced in the Senate mandated the immediate payment of “all sums due” to Black soldiers for their service to the Union. Many Black soldiers who enlisted while still technically enslaved had not received the promised “bounties,” or cash bonuses, for their service, so Bruce introduced legislation designed to force the government to distribute these funds. In 1879, he submitted a bill to distribute money that had not been claimed by Black Civil War soldiers to schools and colleges serving African-American students. Bruce’s proposal was widely reported in the press, causing more veterans to submit claims and significantly deplete the fund. In 1881, he again supported legislation that prevented discrimination against Black soldiers who had been denied wartime bounties and pensions.11
On February 14, 1879, Bruce became the first Black Senator to preside over a Senate session. Senator George Frisbie Hoar of Massachusetts called on Bruce to lead proceedings during debate on a bill restricting immigration from China. Following his time in the chair, Bruce interjected with a short statement of opposition to the proposed legislation. Before voting, he urged his colleagues to consider his position as the lone representative of “a people who but a few years ago were considered essentially disqualified from enjoying the privileges and immunities of American citizenship, and who have since been so successfully introduced into the body-politic.” Bruce praised “the strength and the assimilative power of our institutions,” which he expected would mold immigrants from China into American citizens.12
Bruce also discussed the need to improve relations between the U.S. government and Native American tribes in the West. In an April 7, 1880, speech in the Senate Chamber, he criticized federal policy toward Native Americans, emphasizing that repeated “aggressions” by the U.S. military along with constant revisions to existing treaties had created distrust and animosity between both parties. The actions of the U.S. government, Bruce said, appeared to target Native Americans for “expulsion and extinction from the continent.” In his own comments on the issue, Bruce used patronizing terms to describe a path to assimilation, which he considered the best outcome for Native Americans. This involved exposure to what Bruce called the “attractive side of our civilization,” including property ownership, representative government, and individual rights. As a result, he said, the “savage life will lose its attractions.” While Bruce embraced contemporary ideas contrasting “civilization” and “savagery,” he also recognized the humanity of Native Americans and called on the U.S. government to apply “the wise and equitable principles that regulate the conduct of public affairs relative to every other race in the Republic.”13
Bruce supported many internal improvements to benefit Mississippi. In the 45th Congress (1877–1879), he became the first Black Member of Congress to chair a congressional committee when he led the Select Committee on the Levees of the Mississippi River. In this position, he pushed for federal funding to mold the river in the interests of trade and agriculture. Bruce backed a measure in 1879 to create and fund the Mississippi River Improvement Commission, a panel charged with surveying the river for levee construction and other enhancements to improve navigation and protect waterfront property. A revised version of the bill passed in the 46th Congress. In 1880, Bruce introduced a bill to grant a Mississippi railroad company the right to construct a new railroad and telegraph line through public lands in the state.14
In April 1879, Bruce introduced a resolution to create the Select Committee to Investigate the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company. The Freedman’s Bank, as it was commonly known, was chartered by Congress in 1865 to offer banking services to newly liberated African Americans. The bank failed in 1874 and depositors lost their savings. The Democratic Party had just regained control of the U.S. Senate for the first time since the Civil War. Before formally introducing the resolution, Bruce inquired with Democratic leadership about the prospects of establishing a select panel to determine the cause of the bank’s failure and the status of its assets. In an unusual move, the Democratic majority in the Senate not only approved his request but appointed Bruce the committee chair. He was joined on the panel by three Democrats and one Republican. In addition to conducting several hearings, the committee reviewed documents from branch offices and compiled an extensive report on the demise of the bank. Bruce introduced a bill to reimburse depositors, which was not brought up for a vote. Two other bills recommended by the committee did become law. The first eliminated the roles of three commissioners charged with administering the bank’s remaining assets and appointed a lone commissioner. The second authorized the federal government to purchase the bank’s former Washington, DC, headquarters.15
Bruce opposed the emigration of Black Americans who departed the South in search of opportunities in western states such as Kansas. He did argue in favor of a bill to distribute duty-free British cotton clothing to impoverished Black emigrants, which ultimately became law. Bruce compared these charitable donations to the effort to raise money in the United States to send to poor communities in Ireland.16
During his time in the Senate, Bruce became a fixture in Washington, DC, politics and society. He welcomed influential White and Black elected officials and advocates into his home. In June 1878, he married Josephine Beall Wilson of Ohio—the first Black teacher in the Cleveland public schools and the daughter of a prominent dentist. Josephine Bruce also became prominent in Washington society and was active in local and national Black women’s civic organizations. They had one son, Roscoe Conkling Bruce—born in 1879 and named after Bruce’s Senate colleague—who was an educator in Washington, DC. After Bruce’s death in 1898, Josephine was hired by Booker T. Washington to serve as “lady principal” of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.17
By the end of the decade, Mississippi Democrats had secured control of the state legislature, leaving Bruce with little chance of being elected to another six-year term. In January 1880, the legislature chose Democrat James Zachariah George to succeed him. After leaving the Senate, Bruce remained active in the Mississippi and national Republican parties. He briefly served as presiding officer at the 1880 Republican National Convention in Chicago, where he received eight votes for the nomination for Vice President. When the convention returned to Chicago in 1888, Bruce received 11 such votes.18
In 1881, Bruce was rumored as a nominee for a Cabinet position in the administration of President James A. Garfield. He rejected an offer to be U.S. minister to Brazil, citing the climate and his apprehension that “a colored man will not be well received” there. Instead, Bruce obtained a prime position as register of the U.S. Treasury. In 1884, Bruce was appointed head of the “Colored Department” at the World’s Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition, a World’s Fair held in New Orleans, Louisiana, from December 1884 to June 1885. He traveled throughout the country to collect items such as books, art, tools, and machinery created by Black Americans. The goal of the exhibit, Bruce said, was to demonstrate to “the world” what African Americans “have been able to do in less than twenty years of freedom.”19
In 1885, the inauguration of Democratic President Grover Cleveland meant that Bruce had to resign his Treasury position. He focused on his agricultural investments and engaged in a popular nationwide lecture tour. From 1886 to 1890, Bruce and his family spent significant time in Indianapolis, Indiana. They returned to the capital in 1890, when President Benjamin Harrison appointed Bruce recorder of deeds for the District of Columbia. When President Cleveland returned for a second term in 1893, Bruce left that office and joined the board of trustees at Howard University, which also granted him an honorary doctor of laws. Bruce was again touted in the press as a possible Cabinet appointee at the beginning of President William McKinley’s administration in 1897. Instead, he returned to the Treasury post. He continued to reside in Washington until he died after a prolonged illness on March 17, 1898.20
1Lawrence Otis Graham, The Senator and the Socialite: The True Story of America’s First Black Dynasty (New York: HarperCollins, 2006): 10–11, 16–17, 22–23; John W. Cromwell, The Negro in American History: Men and Women Eminent in the Evolution of Americans of African Descent (Washington, DC: The American Negro Academy, 1914): 164.
2Graham, The Senator and the Socialite: 37–38, 40–41; “Washington Letter,” 18 October 1886, Daily Alta California (San Francisco, CA): 1; Chris Post, “Rejecting Violence on the Landscape in Lawrence, Kansas,” Geographical Review 99, no. 2 (April 2009): 189–190; William C. Harris, “Blanche K. Bruce of Mississippi: Conservative Assimilationist,” in Southern Black Leaders of the Reconstruction Era, ed. Howard Rabinowitz (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982): 4.
3Harris, “Blanche K. Bruce of Mississippi: Conservative Assimilationist”: 4, 6–9; William C. Harris, “Bruce, Blanche Kelso,” American National Biography, vol. 3 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999): 779–780.
4Eric Foner, Freedom’s Lawmakers: A Directory of Black Officeholders During Reconstruction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993): 29; Harris, “Blanche K. Bruce of Mississippi: Conservative Assimilationist”: 11–12.
5Cromwell, The Negro in American History: 167–168; John Roy Lynch, Reminiscences of an Active Life: The Autobiography of John Roy Lynch, edited with an introduction by John Hope Franklin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970): 119–121.
6“Hon. B.K. Bruce,” 7 February 1880, Weekly Louisianan (New Orleans, LA): 1.
7Congressional Record, Senate, 44th Cong., 1st sess. (3 March 1876): 1444–1445.
8Congressional Record, Senate, 44th Cong., 1st sess. (31 March 1876): 2101–2105; Graham, The Senator and the Socialite: 80–81; Senate Select Committee to Inquire into the Alleged Frauds in the Recent Election in Mississippi, Report, 44th Cong., 1st sess., S. Rept. 527 (1876); Senate Select Committee to Inquire into Mississippi Election of 1875, Mississippi in 1875, 44th Cong., 1st sess., S. Rept. 527, part 2 (1876).
9Harris, “Blanche K. Bruce of Mississippi: Conservative Assimilationist”: 17–19.
10Congressional Record, Senate, 45th Cong., 2nd sess. (11 April 1879): 2440–2441; Congressional Record, Senate, 46th Cong., 2nd sess. (9 April 1880): 2248–2249.
11S. 637, 44th Cong. (1876); S. 844, 45th Cong. (1878); S. 865, 46th Cong. (1879); “Letter from Senator Bruce,” 3 April 1880, Weekly Louisianan: 4; Congressional Record, Senate, 46th Cong., 3rd sess. (10 February 1881): 1397–1398.
12Congressional Record, Senate, 46th Cong., 2nd sess. (14 February 1879): 1306, 1314; “Ah Sin. The Chinese Debate in the Senate,” 15 February 1879, Chicago Daily Tribune: 1.
13Congressional Record, Senate, 46th Cong., 2nd sess. (7 April 1880): 2195–2196.
14Congressional Record, Senate, 45th Cong., 1st sess. (9 March 1877): 39; Congressional Record, Senate, 45th Cong., 3rd sess. (14 February 1879): 1316; Congressional Record, Senate, 45th Cong., 3rd sess. (3 March 1879): 2403–2413; An act to provide for the appointment of a Mississippi River Commission: for the improvement of said river from the Head of the Passes near its mouth to its headwaters, 21 Stat. 37 (1879); S. 1543, 46th Cong. (1880).
15Congressional Record, Senate, 46th Cong., 1st sess. (7 April 1879): 286; “Senator Bruce’s Project,” 4 April 1879, New York Times: 1; Senate Select Committee to Investigate the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company, Report of the Select Committee to Investigate the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company, 46th Cong., 2nd sess., S. Rept. 440 (1880); S. 1619, 46th Cong. (1880); S. 711, 46th Cong. (1879); An act amending the charter of the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company, and for other purposes, 21 Stat. 326 (1881); S. 1581, 46th Cong. (1880); S. 1092, 47th Cong. (1882); 22 Stat. 29 (1882).
16“Senator Bruce: Why He Is Opposed to the Negro Exodus,” 6 May 1879, Daily American (Nashville, TN): 2; Congressional Record, Senate, 46th Cong., 2nd sess. (20 February 1880): 1042; An act for the relief of colored emigrants, 21 Stat. 66 (1880).
17Harris, “Blanche K. Bruce of Mississippi: Conservative Assimilationist”: 27; “Marriage of Senator Bruce,” 25 June 1878, New York Times: 1; “A Happy Event,” 25 June 1878, Philadelphia Inquirer: 1; “Washington,” 2 January 1879, Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY): 1; Graham, The Senator and the Socialite: 117–119, 160, 165–166, 206–209; Gatewood, Aristocrats of Color: 37.
18Harris, “Blanche K. Bruce of Mississippi: Conservative Assimilationist”: 19; “Grant Still Losing,” 5 June 1880, New-York Tribune: 1; “Telegraphic News,” 9 June 1880, Baltimore Sun: 1; “Harrison Nominated,” 26 June 1888, Baltimore Sun: 1.
19“Beck’s Blast,” 13 April 1881, Courier-Journal: 3; “Personal,” 15 April 1881, New-York Tribune: 4; “A Colored Man’s High Office,” 22 May 1881, New York Times: 1; “The World’s Exposition,” 20 November 1884, Times-Democrat (New Orleans, LA): 3; Miki Pfeffer, “ ‘Mr. Chairman and FELLOW AMERICAN CITIZENS’: African American Agency at the World’s Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition in New Orleans, 1884–1885,” Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association 51, no. 4 (Fall 2010): 447–451.
20“Bruce Resigns by Request,” 8 May 1885, Plain Dealer (Cleveland, OH): 2; “Notes from Washington,” 5 June 1885, New York Times: 3; “For Recorder of Deeds,” 30 January 1890, Washington Post: 6; Graham, The Senator and the Socialite: 153; “A Deserved Honor,” 10 June 1893, Washington Bee: 3; “Senator Bruce Succeeds Bishop Brown,” 20 January 1894, Washington Bee: 2; “Blanche K. Bruce Seriously Ill,” 13 March 1898, New York Times: 11; “Blanche K. Bruce Dead,” 18 March 1898, Washington Post: 3.
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Houston, G. David. "A Negro Senator." Journal of Negro History 7 (July 1922): 243-56.
Mann, Kenneth Eugene. "Blanche Kelso Bruce: United States Senator Without a Constituency." Journal of Mississippi History 38 (May 1976): 183-98.
Meyer, Howard N. "Two Gentlemen From Mississippi." Chicago Jewish Forum 26 (Fall 1967): 28-36.
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Rabinowitz, Howard N. "Three Reconstruction Leaders: Blanche K. Bruce, Robert Brown Eliott, and Holland Thompson." In Black Leaders of the Nineteenth Century, edited by Leon Litwack and August Meier, pp. 191-217. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988.
Shapiro, Samuel. "A Black Senator from Mississippi: Blanche K. Bruce (1841-1898)." Review of Politics 44 (January 1982): 83-109.
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___. "The Negro in the United States Senate." In Essays in Southern History, edited by Fletcher M. Green, pp. 49-66. James Sprunt Studies in History and Political Science, vol. 31. 1949. Reprint. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1976.
St. Clair, Sadie Daniel. "The National Career of Blanche Kelso Bruce." Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1947.
Urofsky, Melvin I. "Blanche K. Bruce: United States Senator, 1875-1881." Journal of Mississippi History 29 (May 1967): 118-41.
