Blanche Kelso Bruce was born March 1st 1841 in Prince Edward County, Virginia. Bruce’s father was Pettis Perkinson, a white plantation owner from Virginia and his mother was Polly Bruce, an African-American house slave. Bruce was the youngest of 11 children.
The product of an unconventional union, Bruce was not given his father’s last name. That, however, was the only privilege he was not afforded by his father. To ensure his “illegitimate” son was properly educated, Perkinson ordered his “legitimate” son to tutor Bruce daily upon arriving home from school. The two spent hours together learning and playing which initiated a bond between the half-brothers. The fact that Polly Bruce was a slave legally deemed all of her children slaves as well. Attempting to ensure his “illegitimate” son would have the same opportunities his "legitimate" children enjoyed; Perkinson legally freed Bruce and arranged a printer’s apprenticeship for his young son. By 1850, Bruce completed the apprenticeship and moved to Missouri.
Disappointed that his efforts to fight in the Civil War on behalf of the Union Army had been rejected, Bruce taught school for money while he attended Oberlin College in Ohio. In 1864, after working as a steamboat porter on the Mississippi River, Bruce moved to Hannibal, Missouri, where he established a school for blacks. Bruce loved education and considered himself an educator above all things.
In the years after the civil war, Bruce became wealthy by converting 640 acres of swamp land along the Mississippi Delta into a bustling cotton plantation. His affluence and handsome appearance, complete with “curly black hair” made him an "ideal politician" and earned him an appointment as the Tallahatchie County tax assessor and registrar of voters. He would ultimately be elected sheriff in Bolivar County, Mississippi, then tax collector and supervisor of education, all while editing a local newspaper.
In February 1874, Bruce defeated two carpetbaggers to be elected to the state legislature as the second black man to serve in the Mississippi State Senate as a Republican. Bruce’s platform was desegregation of the U.S. Army.
While serving in the Mississippi State Senate, Bruce met Josephine Beal Willson, a wealthy debutant, from Cleveland. On June 24, 1878, Blanche Kelso Bruce and Josephine Beal Willson were married in a highly publicized wedding. The young couple honeymooned in Europe on a four-month tour of the countryside. The young couple only conceived one child whom they named Roscoe Conkling Bruce in honor of his Bruce’s mentor, Roscoe Conklin, New York Senator. Roscoe Conkling Bruce, born in 1879, would become a Harvard graduate and educator by trade as well.
February 14, 1879, Bruce became the first African-American and only former slave to preside over the senate and the first African-American to serve a full term in the U.S. Senate. Bruce was most famous for being the committee chair of the investigation into the Freedmen’s Savings and Trust mismanagement scandal. In 1880, Bruce was the first black man to lead the Republican National Convention which was held in Chicago that year. President James Garfield appointed Bruce as Register of the Treasury in 1881. He also served as the recorder of deeds for the District of Columbia from 1891 to 1893. He simultaneously served on the board of trustees at Howard University from 1894 to 1898 and as the register of the treasury from 1897 until his death on March 17, 1898. He was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in Washington, D.C.
Bruce's house at 909 M Street NW in Washington, D.C. was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1975
Comments