Ex-slave Blanche Bruce was first African-American to serve full term as US Senator [video 55min]

Lawrence Otis Graham, author of The Senator and the Socialite: The True Story of America’s First Black Dynasty is interviewed by Adam Clayton Powell III, director of the Integrated Media Systems Center at the University of Southern California. In The Senator and the Socialite, Graham tells the story of Blanche Bruce, who went from being a slave to becoming the first African-American to serve a full term in the US Senate. The book provides a 3-generation, 130-year view of race and politics in America. Graham discusses his book with Powell, who is the son of civil rights leader the Rev. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., who was elected to the US House of Representatives from Harlem in 1945.