Blanche K. Bruce, one of Mississippi's first Black Senators

Blanche K. Bruce

On this date, Blanche K. Bruce was born in 1841. He was an early Black senator from Mississippi during the Reconstruction era.

Born in Prince Edward County, VA, the son of a slave mother and white planter father, Blanche K. (Kelso) Bruce was well educated as a youth. After the American Civil War, he moved to Mississippi, where in 1869 he became a supervisor of elections. By 1870, he was an emerging figure in state politics. After serving as sergeant-at-arms in the state senate, he held the posts of county assessor, sheriff, and member of the Board of Levee Commissioners of the Mississippi River.

Through these positions, he amassed enough wealth to purchase a plantation in Floreyville, MS. In 1874, Mississippi’s Republican-dominated State legislature elected Bruce, a Republican, to a seat in the U.S. Senate. He served from 1875 to 1881, advocating just treatment for both Blacks and Indians and opposing the policy excluding Chinese immigrants. He sought improvement of navigation on the Mississippi and advocated better relations between the races. Much of his time and energy he devoted to fighting fraud and corruption in federal elections.

Bruce lost his political base in Mississippi with the end of Reconstruction governments in the South. He remained in Washington when, at the conclusion of his Senate term, he was appointed register of the Treasury. He served in that post from 1881 to 1885 and again from 1895 to 1898. He was also recorder of deeds in the District of Columbia (1889-95) and a trustee of Howard University. Blanche Bruce died on March 17, 1898, in Washington, D.C.

Reference:
Black Americans In Congress 1870-1989.
Bruce A. Ragsdale & Joel D. Treese
U.S. Government Printing Office
Raymond W. Smock, historian and director 1990
E185.96.R25

To Become a Legislator