William Seraile. Bruce Grit: The Black Nationalist Writings of John Edward Bruce.(Book Review)

From: African American Review | Date: June 22, 2003| Author: Gruesser, John C. | Copyright information

Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 2003. 280 pp. $34.00.

An overview of John Edward Bruce's life reads like a thrilling work of fiction. Born a slave in Maryland in 1856, he met Charles Dickens, Martin Delany, and Henry Highland Garnet as a child and claimed to have delivered secret messages for John Wilkes Booth and seen Lincoln's corpse shortly after the assassination. In 1874 he began working as a journalist, a profession which brought him great fame in the last two decades...