The Mississippi Humanities Council announced the approval of a new Mississippi Freedom Trail marker for Emmett J. Stringer, a dentist from the Mississippi Delta who fought for civil rights in Columbus and Lowndes County.
The marker for Stringer was one of several the council announced Tuesday.
Stringer founded the NAACP Columbus branch in 1953, serving as its president, before being elected as the NAACP’s statewide president.
Mississippi Humanities Council Program and Outreach Officer John Spann said Stringer’s dedication to civil rights on a community level is one of many stories the Mississippi Freedom Trail project hopes to highlight.
“What these markers are doing is solidifying in metal that there was a civil rights movement here that did not wait on Martin Luther King to come,” he said. “This was an active movement, and these were the people who were a part of it. And people like E.J. Stringer — who is not on the same caliber publicly as Martin Luther King — actually probably did more for his community, more for Columbus and more for Mississippi, than somebody like Martin Luther King ever did.”
As president of the Mississippi NAACP, Stringer was responsible for petitioning school boards to demand desegregation after the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954. He also played a crucial role in recruiting Black volunteers to apply to higher education in Mississippi.
His well known work in the community placed him in the crosshairs of the Ku Klux Klan in 1954 when he was placed on a “death list” along with eight other Black Mississippians. By 1955, he was among three left on the list after others either fled the state or were killed.
Stringer was active in registering other Black community members to vote, organizing the Lowndes County Voters’ League. He maintained his dental practice on Catfish Alley until 1992 and died in 1995.
MSMS proposal
The proposal for a marker honoring Stringer’s legacy was born from a history project that started in 2021 at the Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science. History teacher Chuck Yarborough offered students a list of important figures to research who created change at the local level.
Starkville native Hilldana Tibebu, who was a junior at the time, said she found Stringer’s story compelling and knew she wanted to learn more about what he did for the community.
“I feel like seeing all the things he was a part of, all the positions he had and efforts he made to bring integration about and desegregate schools in Columbus was just very similar to figureheads we hear about nationally,” Tibebu said. “To see someone doing that very similar work on a smaller scale in Columbus, I thought that was really interesting.”
Tibebu and her classmates took to old newspapers and history websites to research Stringer’s life, finding his work was vital to integration efforts in Columbus. She said she was surprised she had not learned about Stringer before, given that he was promoting so much change in the community.
“You start learning that there are more people and details to the story than what we already know,” she said. “It just showed that the fight for civil rights had these small, lesser-known figureheads working for the same goal, not having or needing the recognition, but truly to better their community.”
At the end of the semester, Tibebu submitted a proposal for a state historic marker about Stringer’s work in the community. Finding that the story was better suited for the Mississippi Freedom Trail program, Yarborough resubmitted the proposal that was approved this week.
Spann said that there is not a definite timeline or location designated for the marker yet, though it will at least be paid for and created by the end of 2024. The location of the marker will be determined after discussions with local officials, he said.
For Tibebu, a marker telling Stringer’s story will represent a second, less familiar side of the civil rights movement — one defined by community members creating real change for their communities.
“I think that’s what Dr. Stringer literally embodied with his work with voting rights, with his work with schools, and even just a dental practice, he was embodying what he knew his people could become with the right resources and with access to those certain resources,” Tibebu said. “This is someone that really affected Columbus, and even Columbus might not know it right now. I think it’s just important that the city can recognize the people that played such prominent roles in us becoming what we are today.”
McRae is a general assignment and education reporter for The Dispatch.
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