Thomas W. Stringer

Thomas W. Stringer, an African American minister who arrived in Mississippi after the Civil War, was one of the most powerful political organizers in the state during Reconstruction. In addition to his political career, he was a leader in the Methodist Episcopal Church and in Prince Hall Freemasonry, establishing the first African American lodge in Mississippi and founding the Colored Knights of Pythias.

Not much about Stringer’s early life was documented. His monument in Vicksburg’s Cedar Hill Cemetery says he was born in Maryland in 1815, though other records differ. The age given in his obituaries suggests he was born around 1810.

Stringer’s career in Prince Hall Masonry began in 1836, when he became a Mason at Hiram Lodge No. 3 in Pennsylvania. In the late 1840s, he was appointed by his lodge to work in Ohio, where he became the first Grand Master. For more than a decade, Stringer preached and organized Masonic activities in Ohio and Canada. He may be the Thomas Stringer, age forty, who was working as a cook on the 1850 census in Cincinnati, and he is listed on the 1861 census in Raleigh, Kent, Canada, with his occupation given as “yeoman,” and his religion as “E W” (Episcopal Methodist).

Stringer married Minnie Keith in Cincinnati on 13 July 1852. The marriage does not appear to have been a happy one, as Minnie remained in Cincinnati for the rest of her life, dying there in 1877 after specifying in her will that no part of her estate was to go to her husband.

Soon after the Civil War, Thomas W. Stringer relocated to Mississippi as an educator and minister. An 1866 letter to Major A. W. Preston, the commissioner stationed in Vicksburg for the Freedmen’s Bureau, documents the harassment of Stringer’s church congregation. On 4 September 1866, a policeman disrupted an evening service at Stringer’s Methodist Episcopal church and forced the congregation to disperse.

When delegates were elected to rewrite the Mississippi state constitution—one of the conditions of the state’s readmission to the United States—Stringer was one of about a dozen African American delegates chosen to attend the 1868 constitutional convention in Jackson. He figured prominently at the convention, which conservatives derided as a gathering of radical northern carpetbaggers and ignorant Black men who wanted to impose their will on the people of Mississippi. Despite this opposition, the 1868 constitution recognized Black men’s citizenship and established the first public school system in the state.

In November 1869, Stringer was one of two men elected to the state senate from District 7, which included Warren County. He served two terms from 1870 to 1873 and held the office of county treasurer. He continued to be a powerful force in the Republican Party, attending county and state political conventions and eventually presiding as chair of the Republican State Executive Committee.

Thomas W. Stringer died of malarial fever at his home on Cherry Street in Vicksburg on the morning of 25 August 1893, having served as the Grand Master of Mississippi for twenty-six years. The historic M. W. (Most Worshipful) Stringer Grand Lodge, located on John R. Lynch Street in Jackson, a hub of community and civil rights activities since its construction, was named in his honor and houses the Mississippi NAACP.