 |
History and Government—Congressional Biographies—MississippiBRUCE, Blanche Kelso
(1841—1898)
Senate Years of Service:
1875-1881
Party:
Republican
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 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.
Bibliography
American National Biography
; Dictionary of American Biography
; Mann, Kenneth Eugene. “Blanche Kelso Bruce: United States Senator Without a Constituency.” Journal of Mississippi History
38 (May 1976): 183-98; Graham, Lawrence Otis. The Senator and the Socialite: The True Story of America’s First Black Dynasty
. New York: HarperCollins, 2006.
Brawley, Benjamin. “Blanche K. Bruce, United States Senator.” In Negro Builders and Heroes
, pp. 127-32. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1937.
Christopher, Maurine. Black Americans in Congress
. 1971. Rev. and expanded ed. New York: T.Y. Crowell, 1976. Originally published as America’s Black Congressmen
.
Gatewood, Willard B. Aristocrats of Color: The Black Elite, 1880-1920.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990.
Graham, Lawrence Otis. The Senator and the Socialite: The True Story of America’s First Black Dynasty
. New York: HarperCollins, 2006.
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.
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.
Smith, Samuel Denny. The Negro in Congress, 1870-1901.
1940. Reprint. Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1966.
___. “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.
Source: Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1771-Present
Related Links
|
|
