Mark Bauerlein: The True Story of America's first black dynasty
[Mr. Bauerlein, a professor at Emory University, is the author of "Negrophobia: A Race Riot in Atlanta, 1906."]
At the 1880 Republican Convention in Chicago, as James Garfield beat Ulysses Grant for the presidential nomination, the post of running mate was still open. Among the candidates was Blanche Bruce, 39-year-old senator from Mississippi and a key player in the party. In his home state, he occupied positions crucial to local influence--county sheriff, tax assessor, school superintendent, county commissioner. In the balloting by convention delegates, Bruce placed fifth in a field of nine, a showing strong enough to grant him a high place in Garfield's administration should the GOP win. But even a lesser tally might have been judged a triumph. After all, Bruce was black.
The episode is one of many striking tales in the rambling but informative "The Senator and the Socialite," Lawrence Otis Graham's chronicle of three generations of the Bruce family, which the author dubs "America's first black dynasty." Blanche Bruce was born into slavery in March 1841, one of six children fathered by Pettis Perkinson, a Virginia plantation owner, and a house slave named Polly Bruce. (Her last name was that of her previous owner, who had himself fathered five children with her.)
The most famous record of slave life, Frederick Douglass's "Narrative," rendered vividly the vile mix of lust and domination practiced by slave owners. But in Polly's case, Mr. Graham says, she and her children enjoyed "special treatment" from her masters. Polly never worked a day in the fields and learned to read and write. According to one son, Henry, the slave family was "tenderly treated."
With the outbreak of the Civil War, Perkinson moved his family and slaves eastward, alighting in 1862 in Missouri, where Blanche gained his freedom. During Reconstruction, Blanche migrated to Mississippi and attached himself to Republican politicians looking for operatives. In 1870, he was named sergeant-at-arms in the Mississippi Senate and the following year defeated a white opponent in a run for sheriff, a job that required him to collect taxes, assemble juries and appoint election registrars. He bought rental properties and purchased a 600-acre plantation in the Mississippi Delta.
Blanche's ascent was complete when the state legislature elected him in 1874 to a full term in the U.S. Senate. The Jackson (Miss.) Weekly Clarion--a paper that customarily "displayed open derision toward blacks and Republicans," Mr. Graham writes--hailed Blanche as "well thought of by his political opponents, as a man of moderation and integrity." He arrived in Washington a skilled politician who strategized with party loyalists back home but had little taste for race controversies of the day. As anti-black sentiment suffused the South and Reconstruction collapsed, Blanche remained largely silent, deferring to colleagues and monitoring his land holdings.
In 1878, he married Josephine Willson, charming granddaughter of a free black woman and a wealthy white man who was one of the founders of the Bank of Augusta in Georgia. Pale enough to pass as white, Josephine brought to the marriage class consciousness and a taste for luxury. Blanche and Josephine sailed to Europe and toured London, Berlin, Vienna and Paris. The Bruces were the first black couple to make the society columns of white papers in Washington, enjoying the trappings of Gilded Age gentility in their four-story townhouse on M Street. She eventually became the lady principal of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.
When Blanche lost his Senate seat in 1880, President Garfield appointed him registrar of the Treasury, which put his signature on every piece of paper currency. The election of Grover Cleveland left him jobless, but 18 months in Indianapolis with Josephine's family allied him to Indiana Sen. Benjamin Harrison, whose election to the presidency in 1888 brought Blanche the job of recorder of deeds in Washington, with a lavish salary of $20,000 per year (roughly $350,000 today)....
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At the 1880 Republican Convention in Chicago, as James Garfield beat Ulysses Grant for the presidential nomination, the post of running mate was still open. Among the candidates was Blanche Bruce, 39-year-old senator from Mississippi and a key player in the party. In his home state, he occupied positions crucial to local influence--county sheriff, tax assessor, school superintendent, county commissioner. In the balloting by convention delegates, Bruce placed fifth in a field of nine, a showing strong enough to grant him a high place in Garfield's administration should the GOP win. But even a lesser tally might have been judged a triumph. After all, Bruce was black.
The episode is one of many striking tales in the rambling but informative "The Senator and the Socialite," Lawrence Otis Graham's chronicle of three generations of the Bruce family, which the author dubs "America's first black dynasty." Blanche Bruce was born into slavery in March 1841, one of six children fathered by Pettis Perkinson, a Virginia plantation owner, and a house slave named Polly Bruce. (Her last name was that of her previous owner, who had himself fathered five children with her.)
The most famous record of slave life, Frederick Douglass's "Narrative," rendered vividly the vile mix of lust and domination practiced by slave owners. But in Polly's case, Mr. Graham says, she and her children enjoyed "special treatment" from her masters. Polly never worked a day in the fields and learned to read and write. According to one son, Henry, the slave family was "tenderly treated."
With the outbreak of the Civil War, Perkinson moved his family and slaves eastward, alighting in 1862 in Missouri, where Blanche gained his freedom. During Reconstruction, Blanche migrated to Mississippi and attached himself to Republican politicians looking for operatives. In 1870, he was named sergeant-at-arms in the Mississippi Senate and the following year defeated a white opponent in a run for sheriff, a job that required him to collect taxes, assemble juries and appoint election registrars. He bought rental properties and purchased a 600-acre plantation in the Mississippi Delta.
Blanche's ascent was complete when the state legislature elected him in 1874 to a full term in the U.S. Senate. The Jackson (Miss.) Weekly Clarion--a paper that customarily "displayed open derision toward blacks and Republicans," Mr. Graham writes--hailed Blanche as "well thought of by his political opponents, as a man of moderation and integrity." He arrived in Washington a skilled politician who strategized with party loyalists back home but had little taste for race controversies of the day. As anti-black sentiment suffused the South and Reconstruction collapsed, Blanche remained largely silent, deferring to colleagues and monitoring his land holdings.
In 1878, he married Josephine Willson, charming granddaughter of a free black woman and a wealthy white man who was one of the founders of the Bank of Augusta in Georgia. Pale enough to pass as white, Josephine brought to the marriage class consciousness and a taste for luxury. Blanche and Josephine sailed to Europe and toured London, Berlin, Vienna and Paris. The Bruces were the first black couple to make the society columns of white papers in Washington, enjoying the trappings of Gilded Age gentility in their four-story townhouse on M Street. She eventually became the lady principal of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.
When Blanche lost his Senate seat in 1880, President Garfield appointed him registrar of the Treasury, which put his signature on every piece of paper currency. The election of Grover Cleveland left him jobless, but 18 months in Indianapolis with Josephine's family allied him to Indiana Sen. Benjamin Harrison, whose election to the presidency in 1888 brought Blanche the job of recorder of deeds in Washington, with a lavish salary of $20,000 per year (roughly $350,000 today)....