Blanche Kelso Bruce (1841-1898)

August 19, 2007 
/ Contributed By: Robin Jones

|Blanche K. Bruce|Blanche K. Bruce

Blanche Kelso Bruce

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Blanche Kelso Bruce was born a slave in 1841 in Prince Edward County, Virginia but was raised in Missouri. Shortly after the beginning of the Civil War, Bruce fled to Kansas, becoming a free man before Lincolnโ€™s Emancipation Proclamation.

After the Civil War he returned to Missouri and founded the first school for African Americans in Hannibal.ย  Bruce briefly attended Oberlin College, but out of funds, began working as a steamboat porter on the Mississippi River.ย  Hearing Mississippi gubernatorial candidate James L. Alcorn speak, Bruce decided to move to the state in 1869 to enter politics.

Mentored by white Republicans, his political rise was swift. He was sergeant at arms in the State Senate, then Sheriff and Tax Collector of Bolivar County in 1871. As Bolivar County Superintendent of Education, he started more schools.ย  Financially successful due to his job as Sheriff, he bought a 640-acre plantation in Floreyville, Mississippi in 1873.

Bruce was elected as a Republican to the United States Senate in 1875 and served to 1881.ย  Although he was the second black Senator, after fellow Mississippian Hiram Revels, he was the first to serve a full term.ย  When the Democrats gained control of the state in the same year he was elected, Bruce became increasingly isolated politically.ย  Through the remainder of his term he supported freedmanโ€™s issues against the backdrop of Democratic rule of Mississippi.

While a senator, Bruce argued for levee systems and railroad construction, advocated political reform in federal elections, and spoke out for civil rights for blacks, Native Americans, and Chinese, who were becoming a major labor force in the Delta region of the state.

After his Senate term ended Bruce was appointed to three posts by Republican Presidents. President James Garfield named him Register of the Treasury, a post he held until 1885. He served as Recorder of Deeds for the District of Columbia between 1889 and 1893 under Benjamin Harrison. When William McKinley became president in 1897 Bruce was again appointed Register of the Treasury. Blanche Kelso Bruce died in 1898 while holding this office.

About the Author

Author Profile

Robin Jones was born in Boulder, Colorado and grew up in Warrensburg, Missouri. She received her B.A. from St. Johnโ€™s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1984, and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Colorado at Boulder, the latter in 1996. She has taught at CU Boulder, Regis College in Denver, Santa Fe Community College, University of New Mexico at Albuquerque, and Institute of American Indian Arts. Her classes have included Black American and Jewish American writers, Multi-cultural American literature, classes on women writers, and American literature survey courses.

She has written books about Black American culture and history for children and has collaborated on photography books, Four and Twenty Photographs: Stories From Behind the Lens and the forthcoming Ghost Ranch and the Faraway Nearby. She lives and writes in Santa Fe, New Mexico with her husband and daughter.

CITE THIS ENTRY IN APA FORMAT:

Jones, R. (2007, August 19). Blanche Kelso Bruce (1841-1898). BlackPast.org. https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/bruce-blanche-kelso-1841-1898/

Source of the Author's Information:

Kenneth Eugene Mann, โ€œBlanche Kelso Bruce: United States Senator Without a Constituency.โ€ Journal of Mississippi History 38 (May 1976): 183-98; Howard N. Rabinowitz, โ€œThree Reconstruction Leaders: Blanche K. Bruce, Robert Brown Eliott, and Holland Thompsonโ€ in Leon Litwack and August Meier, eds., Black Leaders of the Nineteenth Century (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), pp. 191-217; and Samuel Shapiro, โ€œA Black Senator from Mississippi: Blanche K. Bruce (1841-1898).โ€ย  Review of Politics 44 (January 1982): 83-109.

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