Signed Document

Partially printed document Signed ("B.K. Bruce") as Recorder of Public Deeds for the District of Columbia. 2pp. Folio. Bruce was the second African-American to serve in the United States Senate (after Hiram T. Revels) and was the first formerly enslaved person, and the first African-American to serve a full term in the Senate (as well as the last for 85 years until the election of Edward Brooke of Massachusetts in 1966). After his release from slavery, he attended Oberlin College and then became a planter in Mississippi. After working his way up through a number of local offices he was elected to the Senate representing Mississippi in 1875 where he was a staunch defender of minorities, including the Chinese and Native Americans. After completing his term in the Senate, he served as Register of the U.S. Treasury until 1885. In 1889 he was appointed by President Benjamin Harrison as Recorder of Deeds for the District, succeeding Frederick Douglass, who left to become Minister to Haiti. Bruce served in that office until 1895 and then returned to his previous position in the Treasury Department. …