M.W. Stringer Grand Masonic Lodge - Jackson, MS

The M.W. Stringer Grand Lodge has long served as an important meeting place for civil rights activities, especially during the turbulent 1960s. It was in April 1964 that Fannie Lou Hamer and several others gathered on the steps of the masonic lodge and founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP).

The lodge was named in honor of Grand Master Thomas W. Stringer, the founder of Prince Hall Masonry in Mississippi, and who served as Grand Master from 1867 to 1893.

Significantly, the lodge paid for activist Ida B. Wells to attend the meetings when she, W.E.B. DuBois and others were forming the NAACP in New York in 1909.

The lodge was constructed on Lynch Street in 1955 and dedicated on May 30, 1955, with an address delivered by civil rights activist and future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. The lodge’s bylaws included a clause that the NAACP “would always have an office there rent free” and soon became the headquarters of the Mississippi branch. Fellow mason Medgar W. Evers became the NAACP’s first field secretary in December 1954 and had his offices there until his assassination on June 12, 1963. Three days later, an overflowing crowd of mourners gathered at the lodge for his funeral.

Hamer said the MFDP was formed because Blacks were not allowed to participate in Mississippi’s all-white Democratic Party.

The MFDP held their first convention at the Masonic lodge on August 6, 1964, which resulted in a 68-person delegation including Fannie Lou Hamer, Aaron Henry, Rev. Edwin King, Unita Blackwell, Ella Baker and Dr. Leslie McLemore being chosen to represent Mississippi at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey later that month on August 22. It was there that Hamer made her historic and impassioned, “I Question America” speech before the Credentials Committee. Two historical markers have been placed at the lodge - one in 2007 and another in 2023 (pictured below). 

(VIDEO TO BE ADDED SOON!)