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Despite the terror going on around them, all had worked to pass ambitious civil rights and public education laws during the post-Civil War occupation of the South.

Prior to the passage of the 17th Amendment in 1913, U.S. senators were chosen by state legislatures rather than a popular vote. Ironically, Mississippi State Senator Hiram Rhoades Revels was awarded the senate position vacated by Jefferson Davis, who had left to become president of the defunct Confederacy.

Senator Blanche K. Bruce, the first black to serve a full U.S. Senate term, had already been a sheriff, tax collector and education official in the Mississippi Delta, and was sent to Washington, D.C. by the state legislature in 1874.

Representative John Roy Lynch, the son of a white planter, was elected and served in the U. S. House of Representatives from 1873-1877 and again from 1882 to 1883.

Revels had come into Mississippi in 1865 to help establish schools for former slaves. A Natchez minister and city councilman, he was born free in North Carolina, of black and Indian (Croatian) heritage. Before becoming an AME minister in 1845, and prior to attending Knox College, Revels spent time in a Missouri prison for preaching to blacks.

Revels had worked hard for the Union as chaplain for a black regiment and at organizing black regiments in Maryland and Missouri. He was first elected state senator from Adams County, Mississippi, and then in 1870 was elected as the first African American senate member to fill the Davis position almost 10 years earlier.

Revels took his seat in the Senate on February 25, 1870 and served through the remainder of Davis' vacated term. After spending just one year in the senate he was asked to become the president of Alcorn College (now Alcorn State University), Mississippi's first black college -- perhaps he was co-opted.

Senator Bruce, first of the three to serve a full term in the senate, was born enslaved in Farmville, Virginia, on March 1, 1841. Tutored by his owner's son, Bruce worked as a printer's apprentice. When his owner moved to Missouri, Bruce escaped in 1861, at the beginning of the Civil War.

Bruce attempted to enlist in the Union Army but after the military refused his application, he taught school, became a dealer in books and papers, and organized the first school for blacks in Missouri. Bruce attended Oberlin College, Ohio, from 1866-1868, making him extremely well educated compared to most people of the time; and he once worked as a steamboat porter on the Mississippi River.

Republicans easily won control of state government, and Bruce, a natural politician with abilities to draw a crowd, went to the state capitol in Jackson the following January to politic with the new state Republican leaders.

Mississippi's Governor-elect Alcorn saw that Bruce had a "quick grasp of the intricacies of Reconstruction politics and government" and when the state Senate organized, Bruce was selected as sergeant-at-arms over several white candidates, even though blacks held only five seats in the chamber.

Once the legislature adjourned, Alcorn appointed Bruce tax assessor of Bolivar County, several hundred miles north of Jackson, in the Delta, where he was responsible for collecting the first assessment of property under a new policy of having landowners pay a large share of the taxes.

In the fall of 1871, in the first election for local offices under the Reconstruction constitution, Bruce handily won the combined position of sheriff and tax collector. Several weeks later, he was appointed county superintendent of education, replacing an official who had left the office in disarray.

His influence was extending beyond Bolivar County, and Bruce was selected in 1872 as a member of the board of levee commissioners for a three-county district, and then in 1873 he was offered the opportunity to run as lieutenant governor but had another office in mind -- a seat in the U. S. Senate.

On March 5, 1875, Bruce took the oath of office and with support from a powerful Northern senator, he received good committee assignments in the Senate, serving on standing committees for Pensions, Manufactures, and Education and Labor.

Bruce also served on Senate select committees on Mississippi River improvements and on the Freedmen's Bank.

But back in Mississippi, racial violence was erupting as the revived Democratic-Conservative party prepared to sweep the fall elections.

As the 1875 campaign in Mississippi entered its final phase, political and racial violence prompted Governor Ames to appeal to President Grant for troops; Grant refused the governor's request, explaining that "the whole public are tired out with these annual autumnal outbreaks in the South, and the great majority are ready now to condemn any interference on the part of the Government."

With these remarks, some historians say that Grant sealed the fate of the Republican order in Mississippi. Although thousands of black voters came to the polls, braving White League threats, the Democratic-Conservatives achieved an overwhelming victory in November 1875 elections and then dismantled the Republican order, forcing Governor Ames and others to resign from office.

Senator Bruce and other Republicans returned to Washington, D.C., in time to see the U. S. Senate reject a new black senator from outside of Mississippi on grounds he'd been elected by a "bogus legislature."

Bruce used this event to make his first speech on the Senate floor, supporting the outcast senator.

During his last two years in the Senate, Bruce gave more attention to his role as a national black leader, speaking out against a Chinese exclusion bill and for a more humane Indian policy, drawing from the damage done to African Americans by such racist, exclusionist policies.

But most of his attention focused on a controversy surrounding failure of the Freedmen's Savings Bank, founded during Reconstruction to encourage industry and thrift among Southern blacks. Hundreds of blacks lost their life savings when it failed in the 1870s and many injured depositors appealed to Bruce for help.

Bruce suspected mismanagement by bank administrators and secured the appointment of a Senate committee, with himself as chairman, to investigate the bank failure. The New York Tribune hailed the committee's report as "a straight forward statement of the fact . . . without any attempt to produce a sensational document, and it reflects great credit upon Senator Bruce."

During the later part of his term, Bruce spoke in support of a Senate bill to remove racial distinctions in army enlistments, expressing the hope that American had passed the critical period in its history when such distinctions were viewed as necessary.

Bruce predicted that "under the influence of a healthy public sentiment" prejudice against blacks "will pass away," and they will receive the full benefits of American civilization.

For their part, blacks, he said, "are beginning to appreciate the value of citizenship . . . We are willing to stand upon our own merits and rest our fortunes upon the same forces that give success to other citizens."

After his retirement from the Senate, Bruce nearly received a cabinet appointment by President McKinley. Support from the black press was encouraging, but McKinley appointed him register of the treasury, "an office that since Bruce had first held it under Garfield and Arthur had been reserved by Republicans for leading black politicians."

Four months later, on March 17, 1898, Blanche K. Bruce died of diabetes at the age of fifty-seven.

Historian Howard N. Rabinowitz, writing of Southern Black Leaders of the Reconstruction Era, praises Bruce for his "political skill and the ability to harmonize both black and white elements in the Mississippi Republican party and to achieve the respect of many white conservatives."

As a leader of his race, the senator may have pursued "too conservatively and too optimistically Reconstruction objectives of political equality, fundamental civil rights, and education for blacks."

***

As Rev. Jesse Gresham of Drew, Miss. and community volunteers hurried to clean up and restore their town's 1929 red brick structure, where many of their parents had attended school, a dusty history book found in a closet was a real treasure to discover.

"I actually found a whole stack of these books. And judging from the stories, including the history of Senator Blanche K. Bruce, they were teaching some pretty important history, back then. I just wish more of these stories were in today's textbooks."

Sources

Howard N. Rabinowitz, ed., "Southern Black Leaders of the Reconstruction Era," (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982).

Undated (photocopied) history textbook chapter found in the Clarksdale Public Library, "History of Mississippi" by Lowry and McCardle.

James Levin Williams, Jr., "Civil War and Reconstruction in the Yazoo Mississippi Delta, 1863-1875 (Mississippi)," Dissertation, 1992, The University of Arizona.