The Senator and the Socialite: The True Story of America's First Black Dynasty [Hardcover]

Lawrence Otis Graham (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 27, 2006

This is the true story of America's first black dynasty. The years after the Civil War represented an astonishing moment of opportunity for African-Americans. The rush to build a racially democratic society from the ruins of slavery is never more evident than in the personal history of Blanche Kelso Bruce and his heirs.

Born a slave in 1841, Bruce became a local Mississippi sheriff, developed a growing Republican power base, amassed a real-estate fortune, and became the first black to serve a full Senate term. He married Josephine Willson, the daughter of a wealthy black Philadelphia doctor. Together they broke racial barriers as a socialite couple in 1880s Washington, D.C.

By befriending President Ulysses S. Grant, abolitionist Frederick Douglass, and a cadre of liberal black and white Republicans, Bruce spent six years in the U.S. Senate, then gained appointments under four presidents (Garfield, Arthur, Harrison, and McKinley), culminating with a top Treasury post, which placed his name on all U.S. currency.

During Reconstruction, the Bruce family entertained lavishly in their two Washington town houses and acquired an 800-acre plantation, homes in four states, and a fortune that allowed their son and grandchildren to attend Phillips Exeter Academy and Harvard University, beginning in 1896.

The Senator's legacy would continue with his son, Roscoe, who became both a protÉgÉ of Booker T. Washington and a superintendent of Washington, D.C.'s segregated schools. When the family moved to New York in the 1920s and formed an alliance with John D. Rockefeller Jr., the Bruces became an enviable force in Harlem society. Their public battle to get their grandson admitted into Harvard University's segregated dormitories elicited the support of people like W. E. B. Du Bois and Franklin D. Roosevelt, and broke brave new ground for blacks of their day.

But in the end, the Bruce dynasty's wealth and stature would disappear when the Senator's grandson landed in prison following a sensational trial and his Radcliffe-educated granddaughter married a black Hollywood actor who passed for white.

By drawing on Senate records, historic documents, and the personal letters of Senator Bruce, Josephine, their colleagues, friends, children, and grandchildren, author Lawrence Otis Graham weaves a riveting social history that spans 120 years. From Mississippi to Washington, D.C., to New York, The Senator and the Socialite provides a fascinating look into the history of race and class in America.

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Buried within this account of a black family that includes "a United States senator; a bank president; [and] a Washington socialite" is a rags to riches to welfare tale that ought to intrigue, but merely bores. Slave-born Blanche K. Bruce (1841–1898) was the first African-American to serve a full term in the United State Senate (1874–1880). Having obtained wealth in addition to political clout in Mississippi, he acquired elite class status through his marriage to Josephine Willson, daughter of a wealthy dentist whose freeborn roots extended back to the late 18th century. The first half of this repetitious family biography focuses largely on Bruce's political life, the second on his son Roscoe, who after a stint at Tuskegee returns to Washington as superintendent of "Colored Schools." The family spirals through a decline that finds Roscoe managing an apartment complex in Harlem and his sons jailed for fraud. In tracing the fortunes of the clan, Graham (Our Kind of People: Inside America's Black Upper Class) allows an absorption with class status to obscure fresher areas, such as Blanche Bruce's involvement in the serious work of the black women's club movement. (July)
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From The New Yorker

In 1878, the Times ran its first wedding announcement for a black couple: Senator Blanche Kelso Bruce, a former slave who entered the Senate in the fading days of Reconstruction (many newspapers ignored his election, assuming that he would never be seated), and Josephine Willson, a daughter of the light-skinned black élite. The Bruces established what the author calls America's first black dynasty, although its members "lived much of their lives outside of black circles." Graham, whose "Our Kind of People" profiled the black upper class, recovers the history of a family that broke barriers in Washington and at Exeter and Harvard. At the same time, he offers a devastating view of the compromises it made. The Bruces' son was an "intellectual dandy" and snob who described a black revival meeting as "a reversion into barbarism." When the family, "after years of favoring . . . white acquaintances" over "accomplished black men," was engulfed in scandal, it found that it had few allies in either community.
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 480 pages
• Publisher: Harper; 1St Edition edition (June 27, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060184124
• ISBN-13: 978-0060184124
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #931,026 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars From Slavery to the Senate- an incredible history, August 31, 2006

By 

J. Michael (Now Born) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Senator and the Socialite: The True Story of America's First Black Dynasty (Hardcover)

Mr. Otis Graham spins an engrossing tale about the rise of a former slave to become a millionaire and U.S. Senator, and the descent of his intended "dynasty" into destitution and petty crime. As equally fascinating as the family's personal story, is the national backdrop against which the drama is played out. This is the story of an entire black elite which could not relate to, and even disdained poorer and darker blacks but which could not gain the full acceptance it so desperately sought from upper class whites. It is the story of a time when black people had to try to navigate their way in a truly foreign America where race meant absolutely everything.

We are introduced to Blanche Bruce as a young slave, the son of a slave woman and her white owner. The author gives us some idea of the complexity and varieties of the slave experience, when he shows us a society where some slaves were permitted to read and write, became educated, had a fairly good relationship with their owners, acquired money and property, had aspirations and families, and were sometimes voluntarily freed by the people who owned them (and who were frequently related to them!) When we think of slavery we think of Simon Legrees, whips and chains. Those surely existed but the entire tapestry was a bit more variegated.

Therefore, with emancipation, Bruce was already prepared to succeed. By his natural talents, Bruce becomes a wealthy land owner and political figure in Mississippi. We read about a truly bizarre world in which people who were considered property only a short time before are running state governments, engaging in politics, publishing newspapers, starting businesses and trying to find a modus vivendi with a white America and, particularly a white Dixie, which couldn't believe what was happening. It was an America where a former slave could make it to the U.S. Senate, serving with former slave-owners and current segregationists, and actually find common ground and even mutual respect with them at times. It was a time when the wedding of Senator Bruce could be covered on the society pages of Northern newspapers while at the same time blacks were being literally massacred by the hundreds in the South. It was a time when lighter-skinned blacks often made the choice to try to pass as white, with sometimes disastrous consequences. This book paints a fascinating picture of a class and race-obsessed America, white and black, with all its nuances, politics, finely honed prejudices and individual tragedies.

One problem I had with the author was his irrational animus towards Booker T. Washington because of the emphasis of his Tuskegee Institute on practical training rather than a classical education, and for his lack of opposition to segregation. Instead of merely relaying and calmly interpreting facts, the author's obvious contempt for him as an appeaser, compromiser and Uncle Tom drips from the pages. Besides being unseemly in a professional historical work, I think it's a bit unfair to the man. Washington is criticized for his "concessions" and "compromises" with the segregation system. That's a false charge. Black America had no bargaining chips to concede or compromise. American society was in no mood to grant blacks completely equal rights in the early 1900s, although black Americans did enjoy significant freedoms, as the life of Blanche Bruce attests. Washington was simply facing facts and rightly emphasized black economic self-reliance and independence. As for his educational curriculum, what else besides practical, economically valuable skills would have been appropriate to teach to a destitute, disenfranchised and largely uneducated race? Sociology? Black Studies? Washington didn't disdain higher education and sent his own children to traditional colleges, but he recognized that practical training was the most valuable thing the mass of black people could have used at the time. (The same might be said for modern America, with its millions of psychology and feminist studies majors running around who would be better employed unclogging drains or building houses.) In "Up From Slavery", Booker bitterly recounts how the freed slaves would learn a few Latin or Hebrew phrases and expect that their economic prosperity was thereby ensured. I think Washington did his people a service and is unjustly condemned in this book.

The book has a few minor errors and the writing is clunky in a few spots, but otherwise it is a very educational and entertaining read that I highly recommend.

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "The Black Kennedys", July 16, 2006

By 

Shanice Washington (Atlanta, GA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Senator and the Socialite: The True Story of America's First Black Dynasty (Hardcover)

I have to be honest. I was ready to hate this book. When Graham wrote his first book, "Our Kind of People", the whole Jack&Jill/Martha's Vineyard/light-skinned/Howard alumni/my-Daddy-is-a doctor-crowd just came out of the woodwork. Everytime I turned around, people were giving me that book for a present. And Graham, with all his perfect black Ivy League credentials just nauseated me. But I have to say, the brother seems to just tell it like it is. He was fearless in "Our Kind of People" when he totally broke down and described the black elite in virtually every city---even explaining which Episcopal church, which debutante cotillion, which private day school and which neighborhood was the "right" choice for the uppity---er, I mean---upper class black families in each major city.

Graham's new book is like "Our Kind of People" on steroids. In "The Senator and The Socialite", Graham actually found a black family that epitomizes the black upperclass he talked about in his first book. Although this is a history book about the first black senator --a man named Blanch Bruce from Missisippi, the book reads like a novel. Almost like a movie. It's got everything in it. A former slave marries a light skinned free black woman. The couple becomes the richest black family in D.C. in the 1870s. They hang out with President Grant and Frederick Douglass. Their kids go to Harvard and Radcliffe and the daughter not only gets a law degree at Boston University, she becomes head of the law review. Graham is clearly fixated on high-living rich people because he even talks about how much money the Senator spends at Saks Fifth Avenue store in 1880-something. He's got details on the size of their houses (imagine, black folks who owned an 800 acre plantation, plus houses in D.C., Maryland and New York!!) I don't want to ruin the end for you, but the Bruce family had it all---then later loses it all. The Senator's son is hired by Booker T. Washington to be a spy while the son is still at Harvard, and then the son later gets to be superintendent of schools in D.C. Then later the Senator's granddaughter marries a black movie actor---who then later passes for white so that he can be in white movies too.

I can't believe I'm actually saying this, but it was great to read a book about us that wasn't just filled with a lot of poor downtrodden black folks. It seems that most stories of blacks during slavery and the 1800s are about poverty, death and failure. I'm sure those stories were the more common ones that really happened, but I'm glad that Graham (I still think he's a snob) found a more uplifting one that shows blacks at their best. The Bruces were a classy family with especially bright and accomplished black women (Josephine Bruce was Dean at Tuskegee Institute in the 1890s, and Clara Bruce was the first black woman to pass the bar in Massachusets--and she also was nominated for the State legislature in New York, from Harlem). In another time, the Bruces would be called the "Black Kennedys", and they would have gone even farther. Graham has come a long, long way since his first book, "Our Kind of People". This new book is an awesome piece of history, and I'm glad he wrote it.

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Biography Long Overdue, August 11, 2006

By 

Bicycle Day - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

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This review is from: The Senator and the Socialite: The True Story of America's First Black Dynasty (Hardcover)

The biography of the first black - a former slave - elected to a full term to the U.S. Senate and his wife, a socialite in black society, has so many levels:

It is a controversial political family, accused by many that the offices were used to consolidate power rather than assist those in need;

It is a family that seemingly rejects some relatives, as members who aren't "high enough" on the social ladder are hardly acknowledged;

It is a family whose progeny simply cannot maintain the financial and social standing set forth by an extraordinary (grand)father and (grand)mother.

The outstanding research by Lawrence Otis Graham brings to life the rise and fall of a family that has never received its due from the so-called history books in high schools and colleges.

After putting the book down you will appreciate the challenges and burdens surrounding the family and perhaps realize that some of the travils are roads you may have traveled, though perhaps to a lesser degree.