The Senator and the Socialite: The True Story of America's First Black Dynasty.

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

by Lawrence Otis Graham HarperCollins, July 2006 $26.95, ISBN 0-060-18412-4

By any standard, Blanche Bruce, the first African American to serve a full term in the United States Senate, was a man who achieved great success. He escaped slavery before the Civil War and rose to an office still rarely held by anyone black. He survived a racist massacre, went to Oberlin College and married an early black socialite. He also amassed a fortune, primarily from Mississippi plantations farmed by sharecroppers. His companions were only the most powerful, most affluent and most and well-known.

Sadly, though, Graham took this compelling material and created a lackluster and irritatingly repetitive book. Despite ample research, his insights into 19th-century race politics come across as guesswork, and he overlooks the perspectives of many fine historians. The text is poorly edited-facts and character background are repeated, sometimes for a full page.

Most important, Bruce himself does not really come to life, and his character is at the heart of the story. His claims to fame were earned mostly by pulling strings, and he did little to serve the millions trapped in the brutal slavery system that "freedom" was supposed to end. Even Bruce's family, who suffered this very fate, rarely heard from him during his heyday. In 1875, during the 19th century's worst wave of anti-black violence, Bruce sat silently in the U.S. Senate while his brave black constituents in Mississippi were being lynched and burned out of their homes for voting. He publicly praised some of the worst racists of the day in hopes of gaining advancement.

Bruce is only the first half of the book; his failed dynasty makes up the rest. The second and third generation tale is a soap opera of bridge-burning snobbery and wasted opportunities. With elites like these, who needs enemies? Indeed, this biography warns of the destruction caused by being stuck on fame, white power and engraved silver.

--Reviewed by Thulani Davis

Thulani Davis's most recent book is My Confederate Kinfolk A Twenty-First Century Freedwoman Discovers Her Roots (Basic Civitas Books, January 2006).