Thomas M. Stewart
Thomas McCants Stewart was born on this date in 1854. He was a Black attorney, educator, and minister.
He was born in Charleston, SC. After graduating from the University of South Carolina in 1875, he practiced law in Columbia, South Carolina. Stewart then became a professor of mathematics at the South Carolina State Agricultural College in Orangeburg.
He was married twice to Charlotte Pearl Harris and Alice Franklin, and had two children. McCants Stewart, and Charlotta Stewart Lai.
He entered the ministry in 1878 after studying at Princeton. In 1882, he went to Liberia, where he became a professor of belles-lettres and law at Liberia College. He spent a year on the west coast of Africa, where he also served as a general agent for industrial education.
In January 1886, he was admitted to the bar of New York City and practiced in the (then) Territory of Hawaii. Stewart contributed to newspapers and magazines, and wrote "Liberia: the Americo-African Republic" in 1887 and "Perils of a Great City" in the same year. He was associated with several leaders in the Black community nationwide, including Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois. Thomas Stewart died in 1923.
South Carolina Encyclopedia.org
The Encyclopedia Britannica, Twenty-fourth Edition.
Copyright 1996 Encyclopedia Britannica Inc.
ISBN 0-85229-633-0
