Bruce High School

The school took its name from a man who rose from enslavement to the Senate chair. Blanche K. Bruce was born enslaved in Virginia, started a school for Black children in Missouri, and after the war bought Mississippi Delta land and won election as a county sheriff. Mississippi sent him to the U.S. Senate in 1874. In 1879 he presided over it, the only former slave ever to do so. He later served as Register of the Treasury, which put his signature on paper money, the first Black man's to appear there.

What the plaque says

Bruce High School Dyer County Colored High School was established in 1893 on Depot Street. William H. Fort, a Fisk University graduate, began as founding principal of the county's first African American high school, which also served students in Obion, Lake, and Lauderdale Counties. Around 1900 the school was renamed for U. S. Senator Blanche K. Bruce, who in 1879, was the first African American to preside over the U. S. Senate. Continued By 1906 Bruce High School was noted for its academic excellence. In 1912 Marshall L. Morrison, Sr. became its principal, a position he held until 1946, after which, his son Morrison, Jr. succeeded him. Due to school desegregation, Bruce High School closed in 1972, leaving a legacy of learning, sports, and its signature marching band. It was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on July 6, 2023.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Davy Crockett Cabin — 23 mi
  A restored cabin and museum in Rutherford for the last Tennessee home of David Crockett, who broke with Andrew Jackson over Indian removal.
• Reelfoot Lake State Park — 24 mi
  A shallow cypress lake in the northwest corner of Tennessee, left by the 1811-12 New Madrid earthquakes and fought over by the Night Riders in 1908.
• Carl Perkins Visitors Center — 25 mi
  A restored caboose in Tiptonville telling the story of Carl Perkins, the sharecropper's son from Lake County who wrote Blue Suede Shoes.
• Alex Haley House Museum — 27 mi
  The 1919 bungalow in Henning where Alex Haley heard the family stories behind Roots, now a state historic site and museum with his grave in the front yard.

More markers nearby

• WW II Mid-Air Collision — 3.6 mi
• Dyersburg Army Airfield — 8.8 mi
• Otho French Strahl — 14 mi
• Banks P. Turner — 15 mi