File photo In this 2018 photo, Syria Sturdivant stands in front of the E.F. Young Hotel, located in Meridian’s historic African-American Business District on Fifth Street. Sturdivant, a noted Meridian attorney and judge, died Wednesday. 

Friends and colleagues are grieving the loss of Syria Sturdivant, a trailblazing Meridian attorney and judge who also was an engaged advocate and teacher.

“I think the community has really lost a friend – and a servant,” said her friend and fellow church member, Hargie Crenshaw. “She was willing to step out and help where there was a need. This is a great loss.”

Sturdivant, who died Wednesday evening, attended the University of Mississippi School of Law and became both the first Black representative and the first female representative in the student senate at the university.

She went on to become the first Black female attorney in Meridian, as well as the city’s first Black female judge. She practiced law in the Threefoot Building.

“She was definitely a role model for me,” recalled Veldore Young Graham, a county court judge. “Every time I saw her, she had a strong sense of gratitude. She was very poised and articulate. She was well dressed. She stood out in the crowd. She was the only African-American female attorney that I knew of as a child, and I knew I wanted to become an attorney, too. It was a pleasure to have her around and to be in her company.”

Sturdivant, who was initially friends with Graham’s mother, continued to support and inspire her after she graduated from law school, connecting her to other local female lawyers.

“She was always there to encourage and support,” Graham recalled, adding that Sturdivant coordinated a regular gathering of female attorneys, encouraging them to network.

The attorney also was a charter member of the League of Women Voters of East Central Mississippi. She also served on the MCC Foundation Board and spent 22 years on the Civil Service Commission. She was on the East Mississippi State Hospital advisory board and the board of directors of the Lauderdale County Mental Health Association, along with the board of directors of the Mississippi Action for Progress.

A strong organizer, she coordinated blood drives and voter registration drives. She also served as a Sunday School teacher and newsletter editor at Saint Paul’s United Methodist Church. She had a son, Anthony Hall, and a granddaughter, Jenna Hall, who live in California. 

Lynne Taleff, who got to know Sturdivant through the grassroots group Women for Justice and Truth, as well as the League of Women Voters in Meridian, said she embodied both fierce strength and femininity.

“To me she was an important voice of the Civil Rights era,” said Taleff. “She has been a steady influence – steadfast. She epitomized what a woman can do. She was an example of how it is possible to retain femininity – to be a lady – and still be effective in voting rights and other important issue. She was a great, great lady.”

Monica Bradley, executive director of the Lauderdale County Habitat for Humanity, said that Sturdivant was a faithful volunteer and also donated to the organization’s efforts. She served on the organization’s board.

“If we had a meeting or a fundraiser, she was going to be there,” Bradley said. “She was very dedicated to the work she did.”

Bradley said she thinks Sturdivant was so dedicated to community service because of her own experiences and successes.

“I think because of the hurdles she overcame in her life, she wanted to see others succeed as well,” Bradley said. “She wanted to give back and she wanted to leave the city better than she found it.”

Sturdivant’s pastor agreed that she was committed to the community – including her church community at Saint Paul’s United Methodist Church.

“She was a faithful, faithful member of our church community,” said her pastor of four years, the Rev. Eugene Boger. “I wish there was a stronger way to say that. She was so, so faithful.”

 Sturdivant initially planned to be a teacher, but after she got criticism from school leadership while advocating for a group of Black students accused of raping a white girl, she decided to take a different path and, in time, settled on law.

“After I went to court with those children, there were consequences,” she recalled during an interview with The Meridian Star in February 2018. “When the superintendent learned what happened I was told that I was too radical for the school. I told him that Meridian was my home, and even if I didn’t know what I would be doing, I would be doing it here, in my hometown. I told them I would be in their hair.”

After she advocated for the students during her time as a student teacher, she became a target of white supremacists, and at times felt unsafe.

Still, she said in the 2018 interview that she trended optimistically about race relations and progress. She liked to recall times that a problem was confronted directly and resolved in a way that brought about mutual respect.

She recalled one time when she was a student at Ole Miss and was the only female and only Black member of the Student Senate. 

When she came into a room after the other members were seated, all of them stood. 

“Those young men were raised in an environment of racism but … when I walked in every one of them rose because it didn’t matter if my face was Black. They were taught to respect women and that mattered to them. I think that says something positive …. One thing about me – and this is true to this day – is that I can accept a white person at face value as long as they are nice to me,” she said. “I’m thankful for the ways we are finding things that we have in common. There is a lot of work to do, but I also do have hope.”

Sturdivant’s pastor said one thing that strikes him about Sturdivant is how she managed to be both realistic and optimistic about the state of race relations.

“She had a great combination of tenacity and grace,” Boger explained. “Her faith shaped her optimism. She had more faith in what the Lord is doing in the area of race relations and the grace of God and humanity. She was very realistic – about our condition, the actions and the injustices and inequities – and yet even with that realism, she placed a significant amount of hope in what the Lord is doing and what the Lord will do with humanity. We all could learn from that – she was a model for us all.”