When I passed by while on vacation in November 2015,
I never could have anticipated that the life and times of Blanche Kelso Bruce—born on this date in 1841—might possess even more relevance now than
it did when I read the inscription explaining why his home had been selected as
part of the African American Heritage Trail in our nation’s capital.
Bruce was one of the most striking figures in the Reconstruction Era, the post-Civil War period when freedmen sought greater economic opportunities
and achieved fleeting political equality with whites. In an era of polarization,
with racism and reaction ever-present threats to his gains and those of the base
that propelled him to prominence, he was obliged to step carefully through multiple
political minefields.
This past week, I saw a meme on Facebook questioning the
need for Black History Month. The remarkable rise of Bruce—the second African
American to serve in the U. S. Senate and the first to be elected to a full
term—and his equally astonishing fall back into relative obscurity demonstrate
that there might be more need for this collective commemoration than many
Americans would care to admit.
A runaway slave from Virginia, fathered by his white
master, Bruce made his way west of the Mississippi, where during the Civil War
he taught black children in Kansas and Missouri. After the conflict he worked
as a steamboat porter out of St. Louis, then moved down to Mississippi in hopes
of finding more opportunity. His business sense proved acute, as he turned an
abandoned cotton plantation into a thriving property over the next decade.
Large, imposing, and gifted with a strong voice, Bruce
possessed a charisma that attracted the attention of the Republican Party.
Soon he was accumulating political IOUs along with his real estate fortune,
holding simultaneous Bolivar County offices as sheriff, tax collector and superintendent
of education. With the help of Black Republicans and Gov. Adelbert Ames, Bruce
was selected by the state legislature to serve a term in the U.S. Senate.
With both blacks and whites suffering in the economic
collapse brought on by the Civil War, Bruce sought to work in the interests of
both groups and forge a biracial electoral coalition. For whites, he advocated
for internal improvements and financial incentives, including federal funding
to control flooding and the creation of a channel and levee system for parts of
the Mississippi’s edge. For blacks, he ardently promoted black servicemen,
including pressing for integration of the armed forces.
But as an “aristocrat of color,” Bruce lost some favor
with his African American base, and whites were not generally inclined toward
him to begin with, even though even the likes of fellow Mississippian Lucius Q.
C. Lamar, a former secessionist, acknowledged his intelligence and moderation.
With Democratic forces gathering strength back at home in an attempt to
suppress the African American vote, Bruce didn’t even try for a second term,
stepping down in March 1881.
After several years of continuing participation in
Mississippi politics, Bruce returned to the nation’s capital. serving as register
of the U.S. Treasury and recorder of deeds for the District of Columbia. He and
wife Josephine—the first black teacher in the Cleveland public schools and the
daughter of a prominent mixed-race dentist before she wed the Senator—remained
fixtures on the local social scene, living at their R Street property from 1890
to 1898.
Bruce’s career is a reminder of how far all Americans
can rise when they are presented with adequate opportunities to match their own
drive and ambition. It is also evidence of how those gains may be lost when powerfully
entrenched forces mobilize to exploit fears of an uncertain new political and
social environment.
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