BRUCE, Dickson D., Jr. 1946-

PERSONAL: Born April 11, 1946, in Dallas, TX; son of Dickson D. (in the insurance business) and Helen (Woodcock) Bruce; married Mary M. Watson, September 28, 1967; children: Emily Sarah. Education: Attended Texas Technological College (now Texas Tech University), 1964-65; University of Texas, B.A. (with honors), 1967; University of Pennsylvania, M.A., 1968, Ph.D., 1971.

ADDRESSES: Home—Tustin, CA. Offıce—University of California, 224 Murray Krieger Hall, Irvine, CA 92697. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Educator and author. University of California—Irvine, professor of comparative culture, 1971—; Attila Jozsef University, Szeged, Hungary, visiting professor, 1987-88.

MEMBER: American Anthropological Association, American Folklore Society, Organization of American Historians, American Association of University Professors, Southern Anthropological Society, Southern Historical Association, Historians of the Early American Republic.

AWARDS, HONORS: James Mooney Award, Southern Anthropological Society, 1973, for And They All Sang Hallelujah; Huntington Library Fellowship, 1975; Fulbright Lectureship, USIA, Szeged, Hungary, 1987-88.

WRITINGS:

And They All Sang Hallelujah: Plain-Folk Camp-Meeting Religion, 1800-1845, University of Tennessee Press (Knoxville, TN), 1974.

Violence and Culture in the Antebellum South, University of Texas Press (Austin, TX), 1979.

The Rhetoric of Conservatism: The Virginia Convention of 1829-30 and the Conservative Tradition in the South, Huntington Library (San Marino, CA), 1982.

(With Arnold Binder and Gilbert Geis) Juvenile Delinquency: Historical, Cultural, Legal Perspectives, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1988.

Black American Writing from the Nadir: The Evolution of a Literary Tradition, 1877-1915, Louisiana State University Press (Baton Rouge, LA), 1989.

Archibald Grimke: Portrait of a Black Independent, Louisiana State University Press (Baton Rouge, LA), 1993.

The Origins of African American Literature, 1680-1865, University Press of Virginia (Charlottesville, VA), 2001.

Contributor to Phylon and American Quarterly.

SIDELIGHTS: Dickson D. Bruce, Jr., is an educator and author who has focused much of his research on African-American intellectual history. "My interest in African-American history has never been separate from earlier work I have done on the cultures of the American South, work focusing on such topics as race, religion, violence, and political ideas. My current research returns to this area, examining questions of honor, political culture, and regional identity in the South during the era of the early American republic," Bruce commented on his University of California—Irvine faculty Web page.

Archibald Grimke: Portrait of a Black Independent is Bruce's full-length biography of the African-American leader who fought for an integrated society free from racial segregation and discrimination. Grimke was born into an old South Carolina family known for its wealth and culture. His father, Henry, was a strong advocate of slavery and white supremacy. In spite of his beliefs, Henry maintained a long-time friendship and love affair with Nancy Weston, a mulatto slave who cared for Henry's ailing wife, helped raise his children, and managed his rice plantation. Archibald was the first child borne of Weston and Henry. After Henry's death, Henry's white son Montague "inherited" his father's mixed-race family and was ordered to care for them for eight years. Montague never freed the family from slavery and degraded, flogged, and imprisoned them. Archibald escaped from his malicious half-brother and hid in Charleston until the city was liberated by the Union Army in 1865.

Bruce chronicles Grimke's life during and after this period. Grimke rose to prominence in numerous organizations including the American Negro Academy and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He began his political career as a Republican in Boston and edited a black newspaper. He later switched to the Democratic Party and was appointed counsel to Santa Domingo, a post that he proudly filled from 1894 to 1898. Grimke eventually became disheartened with the Democratic Party and outraged many African Americans when he joined Roosevelt's Progressive Party in 1912, feeling that the third party supported the best opportunities for blacks in the South. "Few other portions of this work demonstrate so clearly Bruce's mastery of the art of biography as those assessing Grimke's complex relationships with African American advocates of different and competing strategies for thwarting the rising tide of Jim Crowism" maintained Willard B. Gatewood in African American Review. Gatewood also praised Bruce's "lean, graceful prose" and concluded that the biography is "a skillfully drawn portrait of an original thinker and tough-minded activist."

"The Origins of African American Literature, 1680-1865, is a throwback—and I mean this as a distinct compliment—to the kind of literary history that once was regarded as foundational to scholarship in virtually any field of literary study," remarked William L. Andrews in African American Review. In the book, Bruce examines the social conditions that fostered and shaped African-American literature from the colonial period to the emancipation. He traces the progression of an authoritative African-American voice that "enabled blacks to participate in race debates and larger discussions involving American ideas of liberty and republicanism," explained Denise Simon in Black Issues Book Review. Bruce takes care to discuss the careers of both well-known and obscure writers. Noted Andrews, "Reading The Origins of African American Literature places some hitherto undervalued writers in new contexts, which may well spur more research on figures who as yet are but slenderly appreciated in our current canon of pre-New Negro Renaissance literature." Simon felt that while "Bruce's language" in the book "is a bit ponderous, his arguments are well documented and persuasive, providing an enlightening comprehensive picture of how African Americans were able to use their unique experiences to claim a space in the 'realm of public discourse.'"

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

African American Review, spring, 1995, Willard B. Gatewood, review of Archibald Grimke: Portrait of a Black Independent, pp. 135-138; summer, 2002, William L. Andrews, review of The Origins of African American Literature, 1680-1865, pp. 331-333.

American Anthropologist, June, 1977, review of And They All Sang Hallelujah: Plain-Folk Camp-Meeting Religion, 1800-1845, p. 397.

American Historical Review, February, 1976, review of And They All Sang Hallelujah, p. 207; April, 1984, review of The Rhetoric of Conservatism: The Virginia Convention of 1829-30 and the Conservative Tradition in the South, p. 518; June, 1995, Shelley Fisher Fishkin, review of Archibald Grimke, p. 947.

American Literature, May, 1980, review of Violence and Culture in the Antebellum South, p. 331; March, 1990, Frances Smith Foster, review of Black American Writing from the Nadir: The Evolution of a Literary Tradition, 1877-1915, pp. 134-136.

Black Issues Book Review, July-August, 2002, Denise Simon, review of The Origins of African American Literature, p. 52.

British Journal of Criminology, winter, 1990, Denis W. Jones, review of Juvenile Delinquency: Historical, Cultural, Legal Perspectives, pp. 119-120.

Callaloo, fall, 1990, review of Black American Writing from the Nadir: The Evolution of a Literary Tradition, 1877-1915, p. 919; winter, 1990, review of Black American Writing from the Nadir, p. 157.

Choice, March, 1975, review of And They All Sang Hallelujah, p. 89; June, 1980, review of Violence and Culture in the Antebellum South, p. 589; February, 1994, T. F. Armstrong, review of Archibald Grimke, p. 986; May, 2002, B. Taylor, review of The Origins of African American Literature, p. 1582.

Contemporary Sociology, March, 1976, review of And They All Sang Hallelujah, p. 194.

Ethnic and Racial Studies, July, 1995, James Ralph, review of Archibald Grimke, pp. 648-650.

Federal Probation, September, 1988, Wes B. Lucas, review of Juvenile Delinquency, pp. 90-91.

History: The Journal of the Historical Association, October, 1995, Adam Naylor, review of Archibald Grimke, pp. 446-448.

Journal of American History, September, 1975, review of And They All Sang Hallelujah, p. 388; June, 1982, Steven N. Stowe, review of Violence and Culture in the Antebellum South, p. 169; December, 1983, William J. Cooper, Jr., review of The Rhetoric of Conservatism, pp. 669-771; June, 1990, Donald B. Gibson, review of Black American Writing from the Nadir, pp. 316-318; June, 1995, Robert L. Zangrando, review of Archibald Grimke, p. 260.

Journal of American Studies, April, 1991, Tim Youngs, review of Black American Writing from the Nadir, p. 142.

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, winter, 1982, review of Violence and Culture in the Antebellum South, p. 546.

Journal of Modern Literature, fall-winter, 1990, Mary Tiryak, review of Black American Writing from the Nadir, p. 258.

Journal of Religion, April, 1976, review of And They All Sang Hallelujah, p. 216.

Journal of Southern History, May, 1975, review of And They All Sang Hallelujah, p. 258; November, 1980, review of Violence and Culture in the Antebellum South, p. 605; May, 1983, review of The Rhetoric of Conservatism, p. 343; February, 1991, Trudier Harris, review of Black American Writing from the Nadir, p. 127; February, 1995, Raymond Gavins, review of Archibald Grimke, pp. 152-154.

Library Journal, July, 1993, Jonathan Jeffrey, review of Archibald Grimke, p. 88.

Modern Fiction Studies, winter, 1989, Keith Byerman, review of Black American Writing from the Nadir, pp. 768-772.

Nineteenth-Century Literature, June, 1990, Eric J. Sundquist, review of Black American Writing from the Nadir, pp. 105-108.

Pacific Historical Review, August, 1976, review of And They All Sang Hallelujah, p. 439.

Quarterly Journal of Speech, August, 1983, review of The Rhetoric of Conservatism, p. 343.

Reviews in American History, June, 1994, John David Smith, review of Archibald Grimke, pp. 328-335.

Sociology: Review of New Books, May, 1980, review of Violence and Culture in the Antebellum South, p. 103.

Southern Literary Journal, fall, 2003, Warren J. Carson, "Plenty Ventured, Plenty Gained: African American Literary Scholarship and the New Century," pp. 146-153.

Virginia Quarterly Review, winter, 1981, review of Violence and Culture in the Antebellum South, p. 7.

ONLINE

University of California at Irvine,http://www.faculty.uci.edu/ (March 23, 2004).*