Blanche Bruce

Blanche Bruce

Blanche Kelso Bruce (* 1. March 1841 in Farmville , Prince Edward County , Virginia ; †  17th March 1898 in Washington, DC ) was an American politician of the Republican Party . He was the first African American to serve a full term in the US Senate .

Bruce was the son of Pettis Perkinson, a white plantation owner , and the black slave girl Polly Bruce. He was treated comparatively well by his father, who taught him along with his legitimately born half-brother. Because of his mother's legal status, he was born a slave, but his father declared him free and found him an apprenticeship.

In 1860, Blance Bruce began training as a printer in Missouri . When the civil war began a little later , he tried to be accepted into the Union Army , but this turned him away. Instead, he worked as a school teacher and attended college in Ohio. He later worked in the steamship industry before setting up a school for African-Americans in Hannibal, Missouri , in 1864 .

Blanche Bruce's home in Washington

During the Reconstruction era, Bruce became a wealthy landowner in the Mississippi Delta. He was served in several public offices in Tallahatchie County before winning the election to sheriff of Bolivar County . In this district, too, he subsequently held other offices; Among other things, he was a supervisor of education . He also served as the editor-in-chief of a local newspaper.

His political career finally began in 1874 when he was elected to the US Senate by the Mississippi State Legislature . While Mississippi's second representative, James L. Alcorn , ignored him, Bruce made friends with fellow Republican senators such as Roscoe Conkling of New York State , after whom he named his only child Roscoe Conkling Bruce; He also had a good relationship with Alcorn's successor, Lucius Lamar . After six years in office in Washington he was replaced by the Democrat James Z. George ; the Democratic Party had meanwhile won a majority in the Mississippi Legislature , so that a re-election for Bruce was not possible.

At the Republican National Convention in Chicago in 1880, Blance Bruce received eight votes in the election for vice-presidential candidate . This made him the first African American who could unite votes at a nomination convention of one of the two major parties.

In 1881, US President James A. Garfield entrusted him with the position of a Register of the treasury , a high-ranking office in the Treasury . His signature could thus be seen on the dollar bills printed during his term in office until June 1885 . From 1891 to 1893 he was Recorder of deeds in the District of Columbia ; Frederick Douglass had previously held the same office . In 1893 he was made Register of the treasury for the second time , which he remained until his death in 1898.

Remarks

1. ↑ This does not mean the mouth region of the Mississippi south of Baton Rouge , Louisiana , but a region on the Mississippi in the state of the same name, see →  Lower Mississippi Delta Region and →  Yazoo River

Web links

• Blanche Bruce in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)

• Blanche Bruce in the database of Find a Grave (English)
• Biography (English).