Celebrating Black History Month: Henry Highland Garnet, first African American to speak to the US House of Representatives

Henry Highland Garnet, born December 23, 1815 in New Market, Maryland, was a slave, who escaped from slavery in Maryland with his family, and grew up in New York. He attended African Free School until 1828, when he went to sea as a cabin boy, a cook, and a steward, for a year.  He returned to New York City, but had to flee to Long Island when slave catchers tried to capture him.

He began attending Sunday school at the First Colored Presbyterian Church and was baptized. In 1842, he became pastor of the Liberty Street Presbyterian church in Troy, New York. Garnet and his friend William G. Allen, published the National Watchman, an abolitionist newspaper, and became an advocate for abolishing slavery.

He began speaking at abolitionist conferences, where he said that slaves should act for themselves to achieve emancipation. In 1861, he secured secured a US passport from Secretary of State William Seward, declaring him a citizen of the US.

During the Civil War, he helped the federal government with recruiting US Colored Troops.  He moved his family to Washington, DC to support black soldiers and the war effort.

On February 12, 1865, he preached to the US House of Representatives about the end of slavery, on occasion of the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment. Although the House was not in session, he was the first black minister to preach to them.

He continued his advocacy throughout his life, until he passed away in February 1882 of malaria in Liberia.

Celebrating Black History Month: Blanche Bruce, first African-American senator to serve a full term

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.