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Blanche K. Bruce, Senator born

Blanche K. Bruce

Blanche K. Bruce was born on this date in 1841. He was a 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 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 Blacks and Indians and opposing the policy excluding Chinese immigrants. During this time, he married Josephine Beall Wilson.  He sought improved navigation on the Mississippi and advocated better race relations. He devoted much of his time and energy to fighting fraud and corruption in federal elections.

Bruce lost his political base in Mississippi after the end of the Reconstruction government in the South. He remained in Washington after his Senate term when he was appointed to the register of the Treasury. He served in that post from 1881 to 1885 and 1895 to 1898. He was also a 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.

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