The Blance Kelso Bruce Elementary School, located near Swiney Park in the historic Fifth Ward, is state-of-the-art. Set into a growing community with great promise, it offers many opportunities to our students. Our location gives easy access to downtown, the medical center and the museum district. Bus services are available with an application request.

Blanche Kelso Bruce (1841 –1898)
Blanche K. Bruce was a Senator from Mississippi. He was born into slavery near Farmville, Prince Edward County, Virginia on March 1, 1841. He was tutored by his master’s son, and then left at the beginning of the Civil War to teach school in Hannibal, Missouri. After the war he became a planter in Mississippi, a member of the Mississippi Levee Board, sheriff and tax collector for Bolivar County 1872–1875. On March 4, 1875 he was elected as a Republican to the United States Senate and served until March 3, 1881. Senator Bruce was the first African American to serve a full term in the United States Senate and was appointed Register of the Treasury by President James Garfield 1881; recorder of deeds for the District of Columbia1891–1893; again Register of the Treasury from 1897 until his death in Washington,D.C., on March 17, 1898.