Thomas W. Stringer (Warren County)
State Senate: 1870-1871
Born: 1815
Died: August 25, 1893 in Vicksburg, MS
Methodist Episcopal minister. Founded the first African American Masonic lodge in Mississippi. Warren County treasurer. Stringer died of malarial fever in 1893.
Links:
Memorial on Find A Grave
“By far the most influential Negro in the [1868 constitutional] convention, and the most powerful political leader of his race in the state until 1869, was T. W. Stringer of Vicksburg. A former resident of Ohio, he came to Mississippi as general superintendent of missions and presiding elder for the African Methodist Church, of which he had almost complete control for many years. The man had a genius for organization. After a distinguished career in religious and fraternal organizations in Ohio, he led in the development of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Canada before his move to Mississippi. Wherever he went in the state, churches, lodges, benevolent societies, and political machines sprang up and flourished.”
(Vernon Lane Wharton, The Negro in Mississippi, 1865-1890, 1965)
