IN Focus: Sen. Hiram Revels (September 27, 1827 – January 16, 1901) & Sen. Blanche K. Bruce (March 1, 1841 – March 17, 1898)
Hiram Revels and Blanche Kelso Bruce were the first Black men elected to the United States Senate—a fact that still, over a century later, feels both impossible and incomplete. Revels was sworn in in 1870, just five years after the Civil War. Bruce followed in 1875. Both represented Mississippi. Both stood in chambers built by enslaved labor. Both knew their presence was revolutionary.
Revels, a free Black man born in North Carolina, was a minister, educator, and Civil War chaplain. When he took the oath of office, white senators debated whether the 1857 Dred Scott decision still legally disqualified him. Yet there he stood—dignified and unbowed, representing not just Mississippi, but a nation grappling with itself.
Blanche K. Bruce, born into slavery in 1841, was a landowner, educator, and skilled orator. When elected, he became the first Black senator to serve a full six-year term. Bruce was known for his calm intelligence and economic vision—defending Chinese immigrants, advocating for Black war veterans, and warning against racial and financial inequality.
Their victories should have marked the beginning of a multiracial democracy. Instead, they were followed by violent backlash, Black disenfranchisement, and the long, dark tunnel of Jim Crow. Their time in the Senate was surreal not because it was symbolic—but because it was so real, and yet so quickly erased.
Honor the Legacy. Wear the Story. Grab the "Hiram Revels & Blanche K. Bruce are INerasable" t-shirt from our Legacy Collection—honor history and celebrate resilience.
INerasable: Hiram Revels & Blanche K. Bruce Comnbined Legacies
They walked into halls not built for them—and still made history echo. Revels and Bruce are INERASABLE because they represented what America claimed to be and dared it to live up to its own ideals.
They weren’t anomalies. They were warnings. Warnings that power—once shared—would be clawed back through violence, law, and lies. Warnings that progress without protection is a mirage.
Revels and Bruce forced the country to glimpse its better self. And that glimpse was enough to terrify those who benefit from silence. That’s why they were buried in textbooks. Why most people never learn their names.
But we remember.
Art IN Context: Surrealism and the Logic of the Unthinkable
Hiram Revels and Blanche K. Bruce are rendered through Surrealism—a style born from dreams, distortions, and the subconscious. Surrealism is not just art—it is contradiction. It asks, “What if the impossible is true?” and then dares us to sit with it.
The Surrealist treatment fits. Because their very presence in the Senate felt like a hallucination to a country not ready to reckon with its sins. And what followed—lynchings, poll taxes, segregation—felt like waking up in a nightmare.
This art doesn't romanticize their victory. It reminds us that the truth of their story lies in the tension between what was and what could have been.
IN Depth: Resources to Learn More
Books & Articles
- Capitol Men: The Epic Story of Reconstruction Through the Lives of the First Black Congressmen – Philip Dray
A powerful narrative tracing the rise of African Americans like Revels and Bruce during Reconstruction—and the white backlash that followed.
➤ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/41670/capitol-men-by-philip-dray/ - The Negro in the Senate: Hiram Revels and Blanche K. Bruce – Ralph E. Luker (In The Journal of Negro History)
A detailed scholarly article exploring their brief tenures and the resistance they faced.
➤ https://www.jstor.org/stable/2716413 - Smithsonian Magazine – The First Black Senators
A compelling feature on how Revels and Bruce made political history—and how their legacies were nearly erased.
➤ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-first-black-senators-1090373/
Archives
- U.S. Senate – Hiram Revels Biography
Official government biography of the first African American to serve in the U.S. Senate.
➤ https://www.senate.gov/about/officers-staff/memorial/hiram-revels.htm - U.S. Senate – Blanche K. Bruce Biography
Biography of the second African American U.S. Senator, and the first to serve a full term.
➤ https://www.senate.gov/about/officers-staff/memorial/blanche-bruce.htm - National Archives – Reconstruction Amendments & Black Senators
Contextual archive connecting the Reconstruction Amendments with the emergence of Black senators.
➤ https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured-documents/constitutional-amendments-13-15
Multimedia
- Black Senators During Reconstruction – Library of Congress YouTube Series
Discusses how figures like Revels and Bruce navigated an openly hostile Senate floor.
➤ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3k0V4QGpKzI - Reconstruction: America After the Civil War – PBS (Hosted by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.)
Episode 1 includes in-depth segments on both senators’ significance and legacy.
➤ https://www.pbs.org/weta/reconstruction/ - C-SPAN – Reconstruction Era: Rise of Black Leadership
Panel discussion including commentary on both men’s pioneering roles.
➤ https://www.c-span.org/video/?462079-1/reconstruction-era
Exploring Art Styles (Surrealism)
- The Art Story – Surrealism Movement Overview
Explains how surrealism captures dreamlike juxtapositions—ideal for expressing the almost unbelievable reality of Black senators in post-slavery America.
➤ https://www.theartstory.org/movement/surrealism/ - Tate – Surrealism Explained
Art guide that contextualizes surrealist expression through politics, absurdity, and imagination.
➤ https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/s/surrealism
They are IN defiance of time. IN the distortion of memory. INerasable.
