Bruce, Blanche Kelso

Impact on the world

Elected to the U.S. Senate in 1874 to a full six-year term, becoming the first African American to serve a complete Senate term, after escaping slavery at the outset of the Civil War; on February 14, 1879, he became the first African American, and the only former slave, ever to preside over the Senate, and the following year unexpectedly received eight votes for vice president at the Republican National Convention, becoming the first Black candidate to receive votes for national office at a major party's convention.

Life & background

Born into slavery in Prince Edward County, Virginia, the son of an enslaved woman and the white planter who owned her, Bruce was educated alongside his white half-siblings before escaping to freedom at the start of the Civil War. He relocated to Mississippi during Reconstruction, where he purchased a Delta plantation that made him a wealthy landowner, held a series of local offices including sheriff and tax collector of Bolivar County, and became the state's best-known African American political figure by the mid-1870s. The Mississippi legislature elected him to a full U.S. Senate term in February 1874, making him, upon taking office in 1875, the first African American to serve a complete six-year Senate term. He worked to desegregate the U.S. Army, demanded an investigation into the racially motivated hazing of a Black West Point cadet, and opposed the Chinese Exclusion Act on principle even as it targeted a different minority group; on February 14, 1879, he became the first African American to preside over the Senate. He chose not to seek reelection in 1880 as Mississippi's government fell back under Democratic control and Reconstruction-era gains began eroding, later serving as Recorder of Deeds for Washington, D.C. under President Benjamin Harrison; his Washington home is a designated National Historic Landmark.

Sources

1. Emerging Civil War; U.S. Senate Historical Office