Blanche Kelso Bruce, born March 1, 1841 into slavery in Virginia, was the first elected African-American from Mississippi senator to serve a full term. Hiram Revels, also of Mississippi was the first African-American senator but did not complete a full term.
His mother was a domestic slave and his father was her master, Pettis Perkinson, a white Virginia planter. His father legally freed him and arranged for an apprenticeship to learn a trade. He worked as a steamboat porter on the Mississippi River and moved to Hannibal, Missouri where he established a school for black children. In 1868, he purchased a Mississippi Delta plantation and became a landowner of several thousand acres in the delta area.
He was elected to the Senate in 1874 and on February 14, 1879, he presided over the first African-American and the only former slave to do so. He served from March 1875 to March 1881.
He was appointed Register of the Treasury in 1897 by President William McKinley and served until his death in 1898.
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