A Black Senator from Mississippi: Blanche K. Bruce (1841–1898)

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

E-ISSN: 1748-6858|44|1|83-109

ISSN: 0034-6705

Source: Review of Politics, Vol.44, Iss.1, 1982-01, pp. : 83-109

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Abstract

Although born a slave and held in bondage until past his twenty-first birthday, Blanche K. Bruce escaped the worst cruelties of the Peculiar Institutions. He was born in a slave cabin near Farmville, the county seat of Prince Edward County, Virginia, on 1 March 1841. Youngest of eleven children born to his slave mother Polly, Bruce was an octoroon or quadroon, with light skin and Caucasian features; his father's name and race, however, are apparently unknown.