1875
A Senator Is Sworn In and a Dynasty Begins
On the Friday morning of march 5, 1875, the first black man elected to a
full term as senator of the United States, Blanche Kelso Bruce of
Mississippi, sat in seat number two of the Senate Chamber, awaiting his
swearing in. Behind him, in the mammoth room, stretched the
crescent-shaped arrangement of wide wooden seats. There were three rows of
chairs with a desk for every seat – seventy-four in all – one for each
of the two senators from the thirty-seven states that, in 1875, made up
the Union. Tall Corinthian pilasters framed the room.
Thanks to windows high above in the thirty-five-foot iron-and-glass
ceiling, the otherwise windowless room was not as dim as the new senator
from Mississippi might have expected. As Bruce sat there on his first day,
dressed in a black waistcoat, bow tie, and a stiff cotton shirt, with his
handlebar mustache and a fourteen-karat gold pocket watch, he might have
convinced himself that he was the very picture of a Reconstruction
survivor who had succeeded and who proved that leaders could be elected
and accepted, regardless of their color. He might have convinced himself
that he was living proof that race and class no longer mattered in the
United States, that it was possible for a black former slave from Virginia
to overcome poverty, bigotry, and political differences in order to enjoy
the same success that white men of achievement were enjoying. But it would
have been almost impossible to really believe those things.
By the time Blanche Bruce arrived in Washington, DC, for his swearing-in
ceremony, Reconstruction policies had been in place for nearly ten years,
making it possible for blacks in Southern states not only to vote but also
to run for office and receive municipal, state, and federal appointments.
But now that Bruce finally had been elected, the tide was already starting
to turn against blacks – particularly in his home state of Mississippi.
Although the Northern states were in step with the liberal Republicans who
controlled Congress, Mississippi residents were unwilling to allow this
national liberal mood to continue sweeping through their state, even if it
meant they had to rely on coercion and illegal activity. There, the white
Democrats and hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan were inciting racial
violence and organizing aggressive ballot-stuffing in order to discourage
black citizens and black candidates from voting or running for office. At
the very moment Bruce sat in the Senate, his white constituents back home
were contemplating methods for driving black legislators out of office,
and his primary mentor, Governor Adelbert Ames, was losing control of
Mississippi to renegade groups. Even the newspapers in his home state were
supporting the suppression of black freedmen as a means to stomp out
Reconstruction and return to the old order.
It was clear to Bruce and many other black political figures that
Reconstruction’s underpinnings were never fully accepted by white
Southerners. It had been undermined at each step since it was first
introduced by President Lincoln in 1865. When the liberal Republican
anti-slavery president was shot just five days after the Confederate Army
surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant, black Americans inherited a new
pro-slavery president. Besides being a virulent racist and former
Tennessee Democrat, Andrew Johnson did not believe in black equality and
sought to veto all congressional acts that attempted to give the recently
freed blacks an education, job training, or even citizenship. He also
opposed any military protection for blacks against violence from newly
established hate groups such as the Klan. As a native Southerner himself,
Johnson was so sympathetic to the vanquished Confederate states he
permitted them to establish discriminatory Black Codes that severely
limited the movement, activities, and rights of recently freed blacks.
Bruce’s home state of Mississippi had been the first to create these
codes. It was not until the Reconstruction Acts of 1867, which provided
for military rule in Southern states, that black citizens finally
benefited from the new legal rights and opportunities that were promised
to them at the end of the Civil War. It was then that blacks could finally
play a role in drafting new state constitutions and run for positions in
political party conventions. Almost immediately, in 1868, the first black
was elected to the House of Representatives.
By 1875, many of the Democratic newspapers in Mississippi and other parts
of the South argued that white citizens should begin voting along “color
lines” and using “the aggressive instincts of the white people” to defeat
the blacks and the Republicans. During the same month that Bruce was
sworn in to the U.S. Senate, one of his own state’s newspapers, The Hinds
County Gazette, would run a pro-Democrat editorial that said, “[Governor]
Ames and his negroes [have] swept away every vestige of republican
government in Mississippi” and that the people “have been robbed of their
birthright.” This message of racial hatred was beginning to turn the tide
against the freed blacks, even as Blanche Bruce won the right to represent
his state in the Senate.
Bruce must have been nervous as he looked around the poorly ventilated
Senate chamber, waiting to be sworn in. Staring down at him was the broad
second-floor gallery that wrapped around all four sides of the chamber.
Only a few rays of light broke through the twenty-one glass ceiling
panels. Crowded toward the front, the seventy-four desks and their
occupants all faced the lectern and the vice president’s desk, where Bruce
and twenty-two other men would be sworn in that day.
At noon, Vice President Henry Wilson called the room to order. “O Thou
Almighty and everlasting God, the maker of heaven and earth,” began
Reverend Byron Sunderland, the Senate chaplain, as he offered the opening
prayer. “Give them to see eye to eye, in all the grave matters of this
nation committed to their charge, and in all their labors and
responsibilities may they lean upon Thy arm for support. Through Jesus
Christ. Amen.”
(Continues…)
Excerpted from The Senator and the Socialite
by Lawrence Otis Graham Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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HarperCollins
ISBN: 0-06-018412-4
