“S” is for Stewart, Thomas McCants (1853-1923). Lawyer, civil rights leader. Born in Charleston to free Black parents, Stewart graduated from the University of South Carolina with undergraduate and law degrees. In 1877 Stewart became an ordained minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. He became pastor of Bethel AME Church in New York and in New York emerged as a national civil rights leader, a respected attorney, and a writer. In 1883 he migrated to Liberia to serve as a professor at Liberia College and to encourage African American immigration to the young Republic. Disillusioned, he returned to New York but in 1906, was back in Liberia where he was appointed an associate justice on the Liberian Supreme Court. In 1921 Thomas McCants Stewart relocated to the American Virgin Islands where he was regarded as an elder statesman.
“S” is for Stewart, Thomas McCants (1853-1923)
