WEBVTT - The Black Congressmen of Reconstruction: Death of Representation 0:00:03.960 --> 0:00:08.240 That is amazing. It's like three D. I'm at the 0:00:08.280 --> 0:00:12.560 Houghton Rare Books Library at Harvard University with Professor Henry 0:00:12.600 --> 0:00:15.720 Lewis Gates Jr. You may recognize him as the host 0:00:15.760 --> 0:00:19.160 of the PBS show Finding Your Roots. Who are looking 0:00:19.200 --> 0:00:22.880 at a print an original lithograph from the nineteenth century. 0:00:23.280 --> 0:00:26.680 Pictured in it are seven men. The depth of field 0:00:26.760 --> 0:00:30.360 is so striking. I've never seen the original. The men 0:00:30.400 --> 0:00:34.519 are all distinguished looking, dressed in three piece suits, some 0:00:34.640 --> 0:00:40.880 in bow ties. They're elegant. It's not surprising. The print 0:00:40.960 --> 0:00:44.720 says they're congressman from the eighteen seventies. But there's something 0:00:44.760 --> 0:00:48.120 else about the scene that seems out of time and place. 0:00:48.920 --> 0:00:53.120 All of these congressmen are African American. When you see 0:00:53.120 --> 0:00:56.760 the copies, that looks essentially like newspaper print. But when 0:00:56.760 --> 0:00:59.840 you look at it here like look at the hair texture. 0:01:00.080 --> 0:01:03.920 See the hair texture. The caption reads the first colored 0:01:03.960 --> 0:01:08.280 Senator and Representatives in the forty one and forty two Congress. 0:01:08.880 --> 0:01:13.000 It was created by the famed printing company Courier and Ives, 0:01:13.560 --> 0:01:16.479 and it really is a powerful image. You should stop 0:01:16.480 --> 0:01:21.840 what you're doing right now and google it. These men 0:01:22.360 --> 0:01:28.880 Hiram Rhodes Revels, Joseph Rainey, Benjamin Turner, Josiah Walls, Jefferson Long, 0:01:29.360 --> 0:01:33.800 Robert de Large, Robert Brown, Elliott don't just have great names, 0:01:34.360 --> 0:01:38.720 they've got absolutely fierce facial hair. But to me, it's 0:01:38.760 --> 0:01:42.800 that year that really sticks out. Entered according to Act 0:01:42.840 --> 0:01:45.640 of Congress, in the year eighteen seventy two. So some 0:01:45.760 --> 0:01:50.320 of these men seven years before are slaves, that's right. Absolutely, 0:01:50.560 --> 0:01:54.920 There are only two of these men who were born free. Now, 0:01:54.960 --> 0:01:57.800 I have to confess something. If you'd asked me when 0:01:57.840 --> 0:02:01.480 the first African Americans to serving Congress were I would 0:02:01.480 --> 0:02:05.360 have said the nineteen fifties or nineteen sixties, maybe the 0:02:05.440 --> 0:02:12.720 nineteen seventies, but not the eighteen seventies. The men in 0:02:12.760 --> 0:02:17.520 this image all Republicans, all representing Southern states, served in 0:02:17.600 --> 0:02:20.920 Congress during the period right after the Civil War known 0:02:20.960 --> 0:02:25.200 as Reconstruction. That's when the formerly rebel states were re 0:02:25.360 --> 0:02:29.960 absorbed into the Union and four million newly freed slaves 0:02:30.280 --> 0:02:35.120 were made citizens. So it was a time of unparalleled hope. 0:02:35.320 --> 0:02:38.480 Black man could vote and they were about to elect 0:02:38.800 --> 0:02:42.840 congressmen to represent them throughout the South. Look at Hiram Revels, 0:02:42.880 --> 0:02:46.519 there now he looks like a senator. Senator Revels from 0:02:46.520 --> 0:02:50.680 Mississippi was the very first African American to serving Congress. 0:02:51.440 --> 0:02:54.480 In the print, he seated majestically all the way to 0:02:54.520 --> 0:02:58.680 the left. When Frederick Douglas saw the portrait of Hiram Revels, 0:02:59.480 --> 0:03:02.320 he said, last, the black man that's represented something other 0:03:02.360 --> 0:03:06.280 than a monkey. Are they hopeful here? Oh? Yeah, they're hopeful. 0:03:07.040 --> 0:03:09.960 They're exemplars of the race, you know, the best and 0:03:10.000 --> 0:03:14.239 the brightest. And I'm sure that they believe that they're 0:03:14.280 --> 0:03:19.919 the vanguard of legions to come. They have no idea. 0:03:20.000 --> 0:03:26.520 What's about the hither From CBS Sunday Morning and Simon 0:03:26.560 --> 0:03:32.480 and Schuster, I'm Morocca and this is mobituaries. This mobid 0:03:32.919 --> 0:04:00.920 the pioneering black Congressman of Reconstruction January death of representation. Now, 0:04:01.000 --> 0:04:04.360 if you blinked during high school history class, you might 0:04:04.400 --> 0:04:10.240 have missed Reconstruction. There's a movie about it, though. It 0:04:10.400 --> 0:04:13.120 was a really big movie, and that movie, whether you've 0:04:13.120 --> 0:04:15.320 seen it or not, has a lot to do with 0:04:15.360 --> 0:04:22.919 what you don't know about this story. The Birth of 0:04:22.960 --> 0:04:26.120 a Nation was that film, and it was a sensation 0:04:26.240 --> 0:04:30.040 when it premiered. In nineteen fifteen. A sweeping epoch. It 0:04:30.240 --> 0:04:33.440 told the story of the Civil War and its aftermath 0:04:33.680 --> 0:04:37.840 from a distinctly Southern point of view. The Confederacy may 0:04:37.839 --> 0:04:40.880 have gone down in defeat, but it did so nobly. 0:04:41.360 --> 0:04:45.040 The ku Klux Klan who rise up afterward are valiant 0:04:45.040 --> 0:04:50.679 defenders of Southern virtue, and in a notorious scene midway 0:04:50.720 --> 0:04:54.719 through the film, the eighteen seventy one South Carolina Statehouse 0:04:54.920 --> 0:04:59.880 is depicted. The lawmakers are mostly black, and they're a disgrace, 0:05:00.560 --> 0:05:05.640 drinking whiskey, eating chicken bare feet on their desks. The message, 0:05:05.760 --> 0:05:08.240 fifty years after the end of the Civil War was 0:05:08.360 --> 0:05:13.040 clear Reconstruction was a failure and the election of black 0:05:13.080 --> 0:05:21.240 officeholders a desecration. But the lives of the actual black 0:05:21.279 --> 0:05:25.400 congressman of Reconstruction tell a story that's very different from 0:05:25.440 --> 0:05:29.200 the birth of a nation and no less epic. In 0:05:29.240 --> 0:05:31.960 this episode, I'm going to tell you about three of 0:05:31.960 --> 0:05:43.640 those men. We start with a great escape. When you're 0:05:43.680 --> 0:05:45.440 hearing do you imagine what it was like back in 0:05:47.520 --> 0:05:52.359 every time? That's Michael Bullware Moore and we're on a 0:05:52.400 --> 0:05:55.840 boat in South Carolina's Charleston Harbor. Oh my god, look 0:05:55.880 --> 0:05:59.080 at that all of them. We're not far from Fort Sumter, 0:05:59.480 --> 0:06:07.279 where the of the war's first shots were fired. Michael's 0:06:07.360 --> 0:06:12.120 great great grandfather was an enslaved man from Beaufort, South Carolina, 0:06:12.640 --> 0:06:16.960 named Robert Smalls. Robert was still owned by his master 0:06:17.080 --> 0:06:20.080 and Beaufort, but at the age of twelve had been 0:06:20.120 --> 0:06:22.960 sent to Charleston to work and to send his wages back. 0:06:23.040 --> 0:06:27.599 And very quickly Robert was drawn to the docks where 0:06:27.760 --> 0:06:32.719 for different jobs and ended up on this boat, the Planter, which, 0:06:33.360 --> 0:06:35.680 once the Civil War broke out, was taken by the 0:06:35.680 --> 0:06:39.440 Confederacy and configured into a military vessel, and so he 0:06:39.560 --> 0:06:43.159 effectively was the pilot of the ship. He knew all 0:06:43.200 --> 0:06:48.240 of the waterways and was an expert seaman. Maybe because 0:06:48.240 --> 0:06:51.479 of his expertise, maybe it was because he was believed 0:06:51.480 --> 0:06:54.279 to be the son of his owner, Smalls was treated 0:06:54.320 --> 0:06:58.400 more leniently than other slaves. He had negotiated with his 0:06:58.480 --> 0:07:00.760 master and with his wife's mask or for them to 0:07:00.800 --> 0:07:04.640 be able to live independently in an apartment, but he 0:07:04.720 --> 0:07:07.000 knew that his family, his wife and children, could be 0:07:07.040 --> 0:07:10.920 sold away in an instant and the prospect of that, 0:07:11.040 --> 0:07:14.520 as it would for anybody, was just a very difficult 0:07:14.560 --> 0:07:16.240 thing to deal with, and so he had freedom on 0:07:16.360 --> 0:07:19.280 his mind. The crew members of the Planter used to 0:07:19.360 --> 0:07:23.240 joke with Smalls, who was mixed race, about his resemblance 0:07:23.280 --> 0:07:27.520 to the ship's white captain, and those jokes inspired an 0:07:27.560 --> 0:07:31.960 audacious plan. In the early morning hours of May thirteenth, 0:07:32.120 --> 0:07:37.239 eighteen sixty two, Robert Small's set that plan into motion. 0:07:37.960 --> 0:07:41.720 So he saw that the Confederate crew had left, and 0:07:41.800 --> 0:07:44.320 he knew that oftentimes they left for the evening, not 0:07:44.440 --> 0:07:47.120 to come back until the next day, where they offered 0:07:47.120 --> 0:07:50.280 them drinking, they carousing, just having a good time in 0:07:50.280 --> 0:07:53.360 the big city. And you know, certainly there was a 0:07:53.400 --> 0:07:56.840 lot about this endeavor that was a calculated risk. I mean, 0:07:56.920 --> 0:08:00.960 he and Hannah, my great great and mother, his wife. 0:08:01.080 --> 0:08:04.080 His wife had basically said this was a do or 0:08:04.120 --> 0:08:07.080 die proposition that they knew that if they got caught 0:08:07.520 --> 0:08:10.679 that they would be not just killed, but probably tortured 0:08:10.680 --> 0:08:14.040 in a particularly egregious and public manner as an example 0:08:14.120 --> 0:08:16.440 for others. So they lined the bottom of the boat 0:08:16.480 --> 0:08:20.040 with dynamite, and they knew that, you know, if they 0:08:20.040 --> 0:08:22.240 got caught or something went wrong, and there were a 0:08:22.240 --> 0:08:24.920 myriad of things that could have gone wrong, but that 0:08:25.000 --> 0:08:27.240 they were going to blow themselves up. And how many 0:08:27.320 --> 0:08:30.280 children do they have? Two at the time, and come 0:08:30.320 --> 0:08:35.400 with them, absolutely, absolutely, including my great grandmother Elizabeth, who 0:08:35.440 --> 0:08:39.520 at the time was maybe four years old. Smalls disguised 0:08:39.600 --> 0:08:43.240 himself in a straw hat and long overcoat similar to 0:08:43.280 --> 0:08:46.480 what the ship's captain wore. With more than a dozen 0:08:46.559 --> 0:08:50.640 black passengers on board, most of them hiding below. He 0:08:50.800 --> 0:08:55.920 set sail towards the Union blockade and freedom, but the 0:08:56.000 --> 0:09:01.640 harbor was heavily fortified with Confederate sentries chained closely, and 0:09:01.679 --> 0:09:04.240 he knew all the pass codes because he was the 0:09:04.280 --> 0:09:06.679 pilot of the boat. And so every time he passed by, 0:09:06.720 --> 0:09:10.000 they were about five or six forts along the way 0:09:10.040 --> 0:09:12.920 here that he would have to blow the appropriate pass 0:09:12.960 --> 0:09:17.280 going on the whistle one by one. Smalls, playing it cool, 0:09:17.760 --> 0:09:21.560 gave the right pass codes and so so yeah, so 0:09:21.559 --> 0:09:24.440 they let him pass. And the last big obstacle is 0:09:24.480 --> 0:09:28.360 which fort is Fort Sumter, which is the largest and 0:09:28.400 --> 0:09:31.360 most dangerous fort in the harbor, and you know, the 0:09:31.360 --> 0:09:34.600 place where the Civil War began and just a place 0:09:34.640 --> 0:09:38.880 of enormous historical sort of gravity and wait, it was 0:09:39.240 --> 0:09:43.360 captured that point by the Confederacy, and there were enormous 0:09:43.400 --> 0:09:50.520 guns on Fort Sumter. When Smalls got to the point 0:09:50.640 --> 0:09:53.600 where he believed he was safely beyond the range of cannons, 0:09:54.120 --> 0:09:57.400 he fired up the engine and it was full steam ahead. 0:09:58.160 --> 0:10:02.000 But while Smalls and his crew had otherwise meticulously planned 0:10:02.080 --> 0:10:07.520 this escape, they'd overlooked one key detail. Their ship, speeding 0:10:07.559 --> 0:10:11.600 straight toward the Union blockade, was still flying a giant 0:10:11.760 --> 0:10:16.199 Confederate flag. Luckily, his wife Hannah, my great great grandmother, 0:10:16.640 --> 0:10:20.400 so together some white bedsheets, and so they quickly lowered 0:10:20.440 --> 0:10:24.720 the Confederate flag, raised the flag of surrender the white sheets, 0:10:25.160 --> 0:10:27.680 and they were greeted at the Union blockade of the 0:10:27.720 --> 0:10:32.280 USS onward, the Union forces had suddenly gained a heavily 0:10:32.400 --> 0:10:37.240 armed ship ideal for navigating Charleston's Harbor. Even more valuable 0:10:37.280 --> 0:10:40.520 than the ship, though, was the pilot's expert knowledge of 0:10:40.559 --> 0:10:44.800 the harbor, and the fledgling Northern War effort suddenly gained 0:10:44.960 --> 0:10:49.640 an honest to goodness war hero. I mean, there are 0:10:49.640 --> 0:10:54.280 all kinds of articles about how what Robert did was 0:10:54.400 --> 0:10:57.600 just sort of mind boggling. Of course, Robert was persona 0:10:57.679 --> 0:10:59.880 on grata in the South. There was a bounty on 0:11:00.040 --> 0:11:03.040 his head, but in the North he was received as 0:11:03.120 --> 0:11:09.160 a as a hero. You read these contemporaneous accounts, this 0:11:09.240 --> 0:11:13.920 is not a modern day sort of inflation of what 0:11:14.080 --> 0:11:16.720 happened at the time, and it was a really big deal. 0:11:17.480 --> 0:11:20.440 It's interesting to remember that at that point in time 0:11:21.080 --> 0:11:24.600 people thought of of enslaved people as African Americans, really 0:11:24.640 --> 0:11:28.280 as beasts of burden, but really blew people's minds because 0:11:28.880 --> 0:11:32.439 it just was beyond what people thought an enslaved person 0:11:32.480 --> 0:11:36.760 could do. Robert Smalls received fifteen hundred dollars as a 0:11:36.800 --> 0:11:40.040 reward for delivering the Planter, enough for him to hire 0:11:40.120 --> 0:11:43.440 private tutors and sent his children to the best schools 0:11:43.480 --> 0:11:46.880 that would accept African Americans at that time. And just 0:11:47.200 --> 0:11:51.320 three months after stepping aboard the US is onward, Robert 0:11:51.400 --> 0:11:56.319 Smalls met with President Abraham Lincoln himself. Lincoln had been 0:11:56.320 --> 0:12:00.640 cautious about employing runaway slaves in the Union military, but 0:12:00.800 --> 0:12:03.440 Smalls helped to make the case to the Great Bearded 0:12:03.520 --> 0:12:06.400 One that black men should be allowed to serve in 0:12:06.440 --> 0:12:11.280 the Union ranks. Lincoln eventually relented, clearing the way for 0:12:11.400 --> 0:12:17.120 some two hundred thousand African Americans to serve, including Robert Smalls, 0:12:17.400 --> 0:12:21.040 who went on to fight in seventeen naval battles, rising 0:12:21.080 --> 0:12:25.360 to the rank of captain. Why didn't he just take 0:12:25.400 --> 0:12:29.240 his winnings and settle into a comfortable life up north. 0:12:29.640 --> 0:12:33.000 I think he could have it. It would. He earned 0:12:33.480 --> 0:12:38.240 his freedom, he earned the future of just relaxing and 0:12:38.440 --> 0:12:40.720 living the life of a Civil War hero. But it 0:12:40.760 --> 0:12:43.840 wasn't enough for him, and he he came back, and 0:12:43.880 --> 0:12:47.920 he fought for others to gain them the same freedom 0:12:47.960 --> 0:12:52.360 that he had already won for himself. After the war, 0:12:52.559 --> 0:12:56.560 Smalls returned to Beauford, South Carolina, and, in a sign 0:12:56.600 --> 0:12:59.480 of how radically things had shifted in such a short time, 0:13:00.120 --> 0:13:04.280 he purchased the home of his former master. In eighteen 0:13:04.320 --> 0:13:08.280 sixty eight, as a delegate to South Carolina's Constitutional Convention, 0:13:08.760 --> 0:13:13.280 he helped to ratify an amendment that banned discrimination quote 0:13:13.320 --> 0:13:17.240 on account of race or color in any case. He 0:13:17.400 --> 0:13:20.880 then won a seat in the South Carolina State Legislature. 0:13:21.440 --> 0:13:24.720 That same state house depicted in such a demeaning way 0:13:24.880 --> 0:13:27.280 in the Birth of a Nation, but in the real 0:13:27.320 --> 0:13:31.440 world version of events, small spot for compulsory public schooling 0:13:31.600 --> 0:13:35.960 for all children black and white, and in eighteen seventy four, 0:13:36.320 --> 0:13:40.439 Robert Smalls was elected to the U. S. House of Representatives. 0:13:41.120 --> 0:13:43.920 Once black people get the right to vote in the South, 0:13:44.080 --> 0:13:46.599 they start electing people to office, which is one of 0:13:46.640 --> 0:13:50.719 the most remarkable changes in this whole period. That's Columbia 0:13:50.840 --> 0:13:57.079 University history professor Eric Foner, his landmark book on Reconstruction 0:13:57.480 --> 0:14:01.720 inspired a modern day reevaluation of the period. His latest 0:14:01.760 --> 0:14:06.920 book is about fourteenth and fifteenth amendments to the U. S. Constitution. 0:14:07.440 --> 0:14:10.160 Those are the ones ratified in the years after the 0:14:10.240 --> 0:14:15.000 Civil War that banned slavery, extended citizenship to all people 0:14:15.120 --> 0:14:18.760 born in the US, and effectively gave the vote to 0:14:18.840 --> 0:14:22.880 African American men the last most women of any race 0:14:22.960 --> 0:14:26.600 would have to wait another half century to vote. Well, 0:14:26.640 --> 0:14:29.440 when I look back at Reconstruction, I think of it 0:14:29.560 --> 0:14:33.479 as a pivotal moment in the history of American democracy. 0:14:33.600 --> 0:14:36.880 It's the first time in this country or really anywhere, 0:14:37.480 --> 0:14:41.360 that an interracial democracy was created. That's a really big deal, 0:14:41.400 --> 0:14:44.640 by the way, to say that the first time in history. Yes, yes, 0:14:45.360 --> 0:14:48.880 you don't have any examples of this in other countries. Really. 0:14:48.960 --> 0:14:51.600 Of course, slavery is abolished in many plots of the 0:14:51.640 --> 0:14:56.400 Western hemisphere in the nineteenth century. But a functioning interracial 0:14:56.400 --> 0:14:59.720 democracy is not really created in any of those places. 0:14:59.760 --> 0:15:02.600 And here you have it. You have people who a 0:15:02.640 --> 0:15:07.240 few years before with slaves now holding political office. My 0:15:07.520 --> 0:15:12.920 estimate is that about two thousand African American men held 0:15:13.040 --> 0:15:16.840 some kind of public office. I'm talking about from Congress 0:15:16.880 --> 0:15:20.040 down to members of the legislature, down to sheriff and 0:15:20.120 --> 0:15:24.360 school board official and Justice of the Piece. I think 0:15:24.600 --> 0:15:27.880 Robert Smalls was the type of individual who rolled up 0:15:27.920 --> 0:15:32.920 his sleeves and stuck his neck out to make things happen. 0:15:33.960 --> 0:15:38.400 Robert Smalls's tenure in Congress coincided with the rise of 0:15:38.400 --> 0:15:41.840 a black political elite in the nation's capital and in 0:15:41.960 --> 0:15:46.880 emerging social one too. Next the story of the black 0:15:46.920 --> 0:15:56.240 senator from Mississippi and his socialite wife. There was a 0:15:56.320 --> 0:16:00.520 time where like all I did was think, eat and sleep. 0:16:00.640 --> 0:16:05.520 Josephine Bruce Alison Hobbs is a director of African American 0:16:05.560 --> 0:16:09.720 Studies at Stanford University. A few years back, she wrote 0:16:09.760 --> 0:16:15.200 about the June eight wedding of Mississippi Senator Blanche K. 0:16:15.440 --> 0:16:22.640 Bruce to the former Josephine Wilson. This would have been 0:16:23.680 --> 0:16:28.680 the wedding of the century. We can imagine this very 0:16:29.040 --> 0:16:36.080 well appointed, gorgeous home where this very fancy wedding is 0:16:36.160 --> 0:16:43.200 taking place. Crowds gathered outside that home, hoping for a glimpse. 0:16:43.920 --> 0:16:47.120 But the house belonged not to the senator, but to 0:16:47.160 --> 0:16:51.800 the bride's father, a wealthy African American dentist in Cleveland. 0:16:52.480 --> 0:16:56.520 The beautiful Josephine was a socialite in a burgeoning black 0:16:56.640 --> 0:17:01.120 upper class, So it was the senator who was marrying up. 0:17:03.640 --> 0:17:07.359 Blanche Bruce is going to look out on the family 0:17:07.359 --> 0:17:11.360 and friends that have gathered and not see one person 0:17:11.600 --> 0:17:14.480 from his own family, and perhaps not even see one 0:17:14.600 --> 0:17:19.560 familiar face. And this is a sitting US senator right right. 0:17:20.320 --> 0:17:26.560 Perhaps Josephine's family did not want any kind of reminders 0:17:26.720 --> 0:17:31.399 of the slave past at this wedding. That most of 0:17:31.480 --> 0:17:38.159 Blanche Bruce's family members had been enslaved, while Josephine's family 0:17:38.240 --> 0:17:42.120 were born free. Bruce had been enslaved for more than 0:17:42.160 --> 0:17:47.439 half of his life, and so that automatically places him 0:17:47.480 --> 0:17:52.199 in a very different kind of category than Josephine Bruce 0:17:52.440 --> 0:17:56.639 and her circle and her parents circle. Blanche Bruce was 0:17:56.720 --> 0:17:59.120 living in Missouri at the start of the Civil War, 0:17:59.680 --> 0:18:02.680 he led to the Free State of Kansas, and after 0:18:02.720 --> 0:18:06.399 the war studied at Oberlin College in Ohio before making 0:18:06.400 --> 0:18:10.280 his way to Mississippi. There he bought a plantation, got 0:18:10.320 --> 0:18:14.119 involved in local politics, and in eighteen seventy five was 0:18:14.200 --> 0:18:18.600 sworn in as the state's junior U. S. Senator, occupying 0:18:18.720 --> 0:18:22.800 the very same seat once held by Jefferson Davis, the 0:18:22.840 --> 0:18:26.320 former President of the Confederacy. This was not a man 0:18:26.400 --> 0:18:28.320 who was not ready for prime time. Is that someone 0:18:28.359 --> 0:18:30.400 who was in over there had. This was someone who, 0:18:30.520 --> 0:18:36.000 despite all the odds against him, succeeded enormously. Lawrence Otis 0:18:36.040 --> 0:18:38.520 Graham is the author of a history of the Bruce 0:18:38.600 --> 0:18:42.720 family called The Senator and the Socialite. You write that 0:18:42.760 --> 0:18:46.240 he had the manners of a Chesterfield. What does that mean? 0:18:46.760 --> 0:18:50.479 He was sort of an upper class gentleman who, you know, 0:18:50.720 --> 0:18:55.120 carried the walking stick and was finally groomed and almost 0:18:55.119 --> 0:18:59.520 British in his carriage and behavior. He knew that even 0:18:59.520 --> 0:19:02.200 though he at this slave heritage and people were always 0:19:02.240 --> 0:19:05.080 going to know that he needs to present himself as 0:19:05.440 --> 0:19:12.280 a sophisticated Washington political leader. Sophistication came more naturally to Josephine. 0:19:12.800 --> 0:19:16.640 She grew up ensconced in a world of privilege unattainable 0:19:16.720 --> 0:19:20.080 for all but the wealthiest Americans at the time, black 0:19:20.240 --> 0:19:26.480 or white. After the couple's wedding, they set sail on 0:19:26.560 --> 0:19:31.080 a four month European honeymoon, which stops in Germany, Holland, 0:19:31.119 --> 0:19:36.959 and Switzerland. The newly weds attended the theater in London 0:19:37.119 --> 0:19:40.680 and shopped in Paris. If half is true, that is 0:19:40.760 --> 0:19:44.880 told of her beauty and accomplishments, The Washington Post gushed 0:19:45.000 --> 0:19:48.679 just before their wedding, her entry here as a senator's 0:19:48.720 --> 0:19:56.320 wife is likely to create a sensation for this is phenomenal. 0:19:57.080 --> 0:20:00.760 Graham and I visited the five story read Rick Washington, 0:20:00.840 --> 0:20:04.359 d c. Townhouse the Bruces called home, and some of 0:20:04.400 --> 0:20:10.920 these windows are almost Florida ceiling. You must have been 0:20:10.960 --> 0:20:14.680 so happy to find out that the house is still here. Oh, absolutely, 0:20:15.680 --> 0:20:18.359 just a mile from the White House. This was an 0:20:18.400 --> 0:20:22.240 integrated neighborhood in the eighteen seventies. To be able to 0:20:22.240 --> 0:20:25.919 walk down the steps and feel like I would understand 0:20:26.000 --> 0:20:29.280 the life of this wealthy, black, powerful couple at a 0:20:29.359 --> 0:20:32.919 time when you didn't even think blacks existed in a 0:20:32.960 --> 0:20:39.679 lifestyle like this. That house became an important stop on 0:20:39.720 --> 0:20:43.400 the Washington social circuit. If Bravo had been around back 0:20:43.400 --> 0:20:45.959 then would Blanche and Josephine have been on it. They 0:20:45.960 --> 0:20:48.080 would have come after them for a TV show. Oh 0:20:48.119 --> 0:20:50.320 my gosh, they would be the great reality show. Can 0:20:50.359 --> 0:20:52.679 you imagine this living in a home like this and 0:20:53.200 --> 0:20:55.920 you know, socializing in because they're moving from the black world. 0:20:55.920 --> 0:20:58.159 There's their black world and then there's their white world. 0:20:58.200 --> 0:21:00.840 And she's terrific looking. Oh, she's of and she knows 0:21:00.840 --> 0:21:02.239 how that. She knows how to pull it off. She 0:21:02.320 --> 0:21:04.560 knew how to enter a room, she knew how to 0:21:04.600 --> 0:21:07.159 make people want to know her. But she was not 0:21:07.240 --> 0:21:09.520 doing it for herself. She was doing it for her husband, 0:21:09.560 --> 0:21:11.800 and she was doing it for his career. So she 0:21:11.840 --> 0:21:15.280 would invite and host the wives of senators, on the 0:21:15.280 --> 0:21:18.800 wives of Supreme Court justices, and these women would come, 0:21:18.920 --> 0:21:21.720 they would come, they would come, and because of their presence, 0:21:21.960 --> 0:21:25.919 the society columns would cover them. But news accounts also 0:21:26.000 --> 0:21:32.159 made constant, unsettling reference to Josephine's light complexion. It requires 0:21:32.240 --> 0:21:35.400 much more than usual attention to notice that she has 0:21:35.480 --> 0:21:39.080 any African blood in her veins. Read one dispatch on 0:21:39.160 --> 0:21:42.560 the front page of the New York Times. Her looks, 0:21:42.600 --> 0:21:46.960 along with her wealth and bearing, made Josephine particularly vexing 0:21:47.119 --> 0:21:50.679 to many in the Washington political establishment, And in some 0:21:50.720 --> 0:21:56.280 ways that was exactly what was so disturbing to many 0:21:56.480 --> 0:21:59.560 of the members of the Senate and their wives, was 0:21:59.640 --> 0:22:03.040 that she just acted like a white woman to them. 0:22:03.119 --> 0:22:07.800 And in many cases, she's more refined, she's more well 0:22:07.960 --> 0:22:13.760 educated than any of the white senators wives. One paper 0:22:13.800 --> 0:22:16.879 went so far as to run an article titled ought 0:22:16.920 --> 0:22:20.879 we to visit Her, describing the dilemma many white senators 0:22:20.920 --> 0:22:25.399 wives faced. I mean, you could imagine that these white 0:22:25.560 --> 0:22:29.920 women who are in Washington, who are married to senators, 0:22:30.440 --> 0:22:35.400 they perceived themselves as being at the very top of 0:22:35.520 --> 0:22:43.120 the social ladder, and then a black woman comes, and 0:22:43.720 --> 0:22:48.360 all of the sudden, she is the topic that everyone 0:22:48.480 --> 0:22:53.119 can't stop talking about, and she's the one that the 0:22:53.160 --> 0:22:56.640 newspapers want to write about. There was no rule book 0:22:56.840 --> 0:23:00.879 for how to receive the wife of an African American senator, 0:23:02.800 --> 0:23:06.880 and so all of these white women are sort of 0:23:06.920 --> 0:23:10.919 making it up as they go along, and some seem 0:23:11.080 --> 0:23:19.400 to do it with some grace, and others don't now. 0:23:19.440 --> 0:23:22.880 It probably won't surprise you that some politicians and their 0:23:22.920 --> 0:23:27.040 wives did snub the Bruces. But what's interesting to me 0:23:27.520 --> 0:23:32.080 is the disapproval those politicians were met with. For example, 0:23:32.400 --> 0:23:36.399 there's this eight seventy nine editorial from a Wisconsin newspaper 0:23:36.840 --> 0:23:42.719 that scolds the politicians who have quote studiously ignored Josephine 0:23:42.720 --> 0:23:48.399 Bruce's existence. The editorial concludes, they have allowed themselves to 0:23:48.480 --> 0:23:53.680 be controlled by that old race prejudice. To me, it's 0:23:53.720 --> 0:23:57.760 so striking that this editorial is not making any excuses 0:23:58.359 --> 0:24:01.919 for the white editors and their wives who have not 0:24:01.960 --> 0:24:06.000 received the Bruces right, which is so interesting. It seems 0:24:06.040 --> 0:24:12.199 surprising that anyone would be surprised that there were white 0:24:12.560 --> 0:24:15.879 wives who did not visit the Bruces. I mean, it 0:24:16.000 --> 0:24:19.080 seems like that would have been what people would have 0:24:19.200 --> 0:24:23.040 expected at the time. And so that's where I think 0:24:23.400 --> 0:24:26.280 we do have to kind of think, well, maybe there 0:24:26.320 --> 0:24:32.160 were people who really did believe that a social revolution 0:24:32.280 --> 0:24:37.639 had happened and that people needed to accept that and 0:24:37.720 --> 0:24:42.040 move on and move ahead. As Senator Blanche Cave, Bruce 0:24:42.119 --> 0:24:45.240 advocated not only for the rights of black people, but 0:24:45.359 --> 0:24:50.000 also Native Americans and Chinese immigrant laborers. He was the 0:24:50.080 --> 0:24:54.080 first African American to preside over the Senate. He even 0:24:54.160 --> 0:25:00.600 chaired a Republican national Convention. For many Americans, the Bruce's 0:25:00.640 --> 0:25:04.320 wealth and status must have embodied the heights to which 0:25:04.359 --> 0:25:08.520 African Americans could aspire in a reconstructed America. But the 0:25:08.640 --> 0:25:12.160 uneasiness some felt about them being part of the Washington 0:25:12.320 --> 0:25:27.920 establishment would be a sign of things to come back. 0:25:28.000 --> 0:25:31.080 In eighteen sixty one, on the eve of the Civil War, 0:25:31.560 --> 0:25:36.160 Alexander Stephens, the vice president of the newly formed Confederate 0:25:36.200 --> 0:25:40.440 States of America, delivered a speech laying out the reasoning 0:25:40.480 --> 0:25:46.919 behind the nascent rebellion. The great truth, he proclaimed, was 0:25:47.000 --> 0:25:49.879 that the negro is not equal to the white man, 0:25:50.240 --> 0:25:54.760 that slavery, subordination to the superior race is his natural 0:25:54.880 --> 0:25:59.800 and normal condition. But by eighteen seventy four a lot 0:25:59.840 --> 0:26:06.240 had changed. Over six hundred thousand Americans had died in 0:26:06.320 --> 0:26:10.600 the war that followed that speech, four million slaves were freed, 0:26:10.720 --> 0:26:13.840 and many of them now held public office throughout the South, 0:26:14.400 --> 0:26:18.399 and the US Congress was fiercely debating a Republican backed 0:26:18.520 --> 0:26:22.640 civil rights bill that would outlaw discrimination based on race. 0:26:22.840 --> 0:26:27.919 In hotels, theaters, and railway cars. The Democratic opposition to 0:26:28.000 --> 0:26:32.160 the law was being led by none other than former 0:26:32.240 --> 0:26:37.320 Vice President of the Confederacy Alexander Stevens. He was now 0:26:37.400 --> 0:26:42.120 back in Congress from Georgia again, Professor Eric Fohner, and 0:26:42.240 --> 0:26:45.040 he'd given a speech denouncing the civil Rights law and 0:26:45.119 --> 0:26:48.680 really defending slavery and saying the Civil War had nothing 0:26:48.680 --> 0:26:51.720 to do with slavery. It was all local rights. Remember 0:26:51.760 --> 0:26:56.000 when the South seceded, Stevens gave a speech saying slavery 0:26:56.080 --> 0:26:59.600 is the cornerstone of the Confederacy. Fast forward fifteen years 0:26:59.640 --> 0:27:02.080 and he's, oh, no, no, it wasn't about slavery. And anyway, 0:27:02.080 --> 0:27:05.680 black people don't deserve these rights anyway. We don't want 0:27:05.680 --> 0:27:07.720 to be in a hotel with a black person, or 0:27:07.840 --> 0:27:10.320 a railroad with a black person, or anything like that. 0:27:10.680 --> 0:27:13.800 And the Republican floor leader, when Stevens was finished, said, 0:27:13.800 --> 0:27:16.040 you know, it's kind of late. Now. We're gonna adjourn 0:27:16.119 --> 0:27:20.160 until tomorrow morning when Robert B. Elliott will give the 0:27:20.200 --> 0:27:28.440 Republican response. South Carolina Congressman Robert Brown. Elliott was famous 0:27:28.480 --> 0:27:33.119 for his sterling oratory, his effortless display of classical learning, 0:27:33.480 --> 0:27:38.080 and his eloquence in debate. He was also black, but 0:27:38.160 --> 0:27:41.920 among his African American colleagues, most of whom were mixed race, 0:27:42.440 --> 0:27:46.720 Elliott stood out for his darker skin, A living, breathing 0:27:46.800 --> 0:27:50.719 rebuttal to racist ideology of the time. If you were 0:27:50.760 --> 0:27:54.400 an intelligent black person and you were mixed, like Frederick Douglas, 0:27:54.800 --> 0:27:59.080 of course racists would say, yes, of course, your braun 0:27:59.280 --> 0:28:02.679 comes from your freaking heritage. Your brain comes from your 0:28:02.720 --> 0:28:06.560 European heritings. So I think he must have caused quite 0:28:06.600 --> 0:28:12.480 as their Elliott was also more radical in his politics 0:28:12.600 --> 0:28:16.679 than his black colleagues were. He had opposed granting amnesty 0:28:16.760 --> 0:28:20.040 to former Confederates, so when word got out that he 0:28:20.040 --> 0:28:24.199 would give the response to Steven's, African Americans filled the 0:28:24.240 --> 0:28:27.879 house galleries. They came to see what one paper dubbed 0:28:27.880 --> 0:28:31.760 as quote the African take on the quote brain of 0:28:31.800 --> 0:28:37.119 the Confederacy. Elliott began his response to Stevens by insisting 0:28:37.400 --> 0:28:42.200