The Senator and the Socialite

The story of a slave-turned-US senator and an African American dynasty: “A compelling portrait of the Bruce family’s rise, dynamics and downfall.” — The Washington Post   Spanning more than a century, Lawrence Otis’s illuminating biography is a fascinating look at race and class in the latter decades of nineteenth-century America, witnessed through the life of Blanche Kelso Bruce—United States senator from Mississippi and head of America’s first black dynasty. Otis reveals how Bruce rose fr