[Cabinet Card Photograph of Prominent Bates College Graduate Thomas Seth Bruce]

Lewiston, Me: Flagg & Plummer, 1898. Good.. Cabinet card photograph, 5.5 x 4 inches, on a printed studio mount, overall about 9 x 7 inches. Considerable wear, scuffing, scratching, soiling, and staining to image and mount, with manuscript caption obliterated above the subject's head. A wonderful surviving image of a notable 19th-century graduate of Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, Thomas Seth Bruce, who graduated in 1898. Thomas Seth Bruce (1871-1913) was a standout right guard on the Bates College football team at a time when few African American students participated in interscholastic sports. He was also a decorated track and field star at the school. In the present photograph, Bates poses in his graduation cap and gown, with a small Bates College pin affixed to his lapel. According to the Bates College Athletics website: "A powerful orator, Bruce delivered a speech on 'The Race Problem' at the Senior Exhibition in April 1898, in which he called out the failure of Reconstruction, asking how 'a great country like ours could afford to deny, absolutely deny, to more than one-tenth of its citizens an equal opportunity to grow, while it is encouraging and protecting the other nine-tenths in its growth?' Bruce earned a divinity degree from Newton Theological Institution and was ordained at historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Boston in 1901.  That year, Bruce successfully pursued legal action against a Harvard Square barber who refused to shave him. In court, the barber said he was too busy to shave Bruce, but the judge didn't buy it, fining him $20 for discrimination. Rather than accepting a pastorate in the North, Bruce chose to become a pastor and teacher in North Carolina and Virginia. He described the difficult work in football terms: 'I am playing the game hard; tackling low, but at times advance the ball just a little. Sometimes I get injured a little and call for time -- sometimes I get offside and lose several yards, but I am not discouraged.' He died in 1913." Images of Bruce are exceedingly rare, given that he lived a relatively short life, and most of his final years in churches in the South. (Inventory #: 5878)