The original Bruce School was built in 1898 and was named for Blanche Kelso Bruce, the first African-American to serve a full term in the U.S. Senate.  He was born March 1, 1841 near Farmville, Prince Edward County, Va., the son of a black slave and a white plantation owner. Bruce was born into slavery in Virginia, but escaped at the start of the Civil War and made his way to Ohio, where he attended Oberlin College. After the Civil War he moved to Mississippi and got involved in local politics. He taught school and founded Missouri's first school for Blacks. Later he moved to Mississippi where he held a number of local county positions including sheriff. In 1875, during the post-war Reconstruction Era, Bruce was elected by the Mississippi legislature to become one of the state's two U.S. senators. He was the first black senator and to serve a full six year term in the United States Senate as the Senator of the state of Mississippi (1875-1881). He pressed for civil rights not only for Blacks but also for Native Americans and Chinese immigrants. When his term was over in 1881, Bruce was appointed by President James Garfield to the office of Register of the Treasury. As such, Bruce was the first African-American to be represented on U.S. currency. Bruce also served as the recorder of deeds for Washington, D.C., and again as the Register of the Treasury, where he served until his death in 1898.  The title of Register of the Treasury no longer exists. According to the website of the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the office became the Public Debt Service in 1919, which in turn became the Bureau of the Public Debt in 1940.

Bruce died in 1898, the same year the Bruce school was built.  The school still stands in its original location on Kenyon Street and Sherman Avenue. The last school year for the Bruce School was 1973, when it merged with Monroe School and moved one block to the south. The building itself is 32,800 square feet, according to OPM.

References:

Rabinowitz, Howard N. "Three Reconstruction Leaders: Blanche K. Bruce, Robert Brown Eliott, and Holland Thompson." In Black Leaders of the Nineteenth Century, edited by Leon Litwack and August Meier. Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Pr., 1998.

Swain, Charles. Blanche K. Bruce, Politician (Black Americans of Achievement, Series One). Broomall, PA: Chelsea House Pub., 1995.

http://www.yale.edu/glc/tangledroots/tr12bb4.htm

http://www.capitalcommunitynews.com/publications/dcnorth/2006-JULY/html/Ward_1.cfm

http://www.answers.com/topic/blanche-bruce

Additional Images

	Blance Kelso Bruce Photo: Library of Congress (Courtesy of American Heritage Magazine)