An icon in Rochester’s Black community

Midge Thomas, who created an intellectual and social haven for Rochester’s Black community with her husband and then sustained it for more than 50 years after his death, died Jan. 8 at Rochester General Hospital. She was 99.

She had been hospitalized for several weeks with respiratory problems, her goddaughter, Beverly Randall, said.

Midge Thomas was best known as the wife of Dr. Freddie Thomas, a pioneering Black scientist at Eastman Kodak Co. and the University of Rochester; her 2023 biography was titled “Letters to Freddie.” But she was also a Rochester icon in her own right, mentoring countless young people and creating spaces that provided intellectual and cultural opportunities for the community.

She co-founded the Rochester branch of the National Association of Negro Business and Professional Women’s Clubs and served as an early president. After her husband’s death, she created the Freddie Thomas Foundation as well as the Triangle Community Center, organizations meant to carry his life’s work forward.

“She was just a very special person,” Randall said. “You don’t find people like that every day.”

Margaret Caroline Banks—Midge was an early family nickname—was born Sept. 1, 1926. She grew up in Mumford, where her father’s family had been founding members of the small but active Black community. She graduated from Caledonia-Mumford High School in 1944, then got a degree in cosmetology from the Adrianne School of Beauty Culture in Rochester.

She opened a beauty salon in Mumford and ran it from 1947 until 1956, when she met Freddie Thomas at a party. They married less than a year later, in February 1957, and bought a house on Skuse Street off Hudson Avenue. It became “a community center of knowledge,” according to a 1978 article in about … time magazine, where “the dining table was a conference center for distinguished scientists, clergy, historians, scholars, and people from every walk of life.”

Midge Thomas served as hostess and mentor to the teenagers her husband would bring home for impromptu tutoring sessions.

“I always set the dinner table with a few more placemats each night because someone would inevitably come over, whether it was a young boy eager to learn, a curious teenager who heard about Freddie helping youngsters, or our adult friends simply walking in for good conversation,” she said in her husband’s biography, “Silent Leader.” “Our place was always open to people of all kinds, all hours (of the) night.”

The beginning of the end of the Thomases’ married life came in 1972, when Freddie Thomas first began to feel the symptoms of multiple myeloma, a cancer affecting the plasma cells in bone marrow. He died Feb. 24, 1974, a few weeks after the couple’s 17^th wedding anniversary.

It wasn’t long before Midge Thomas’ grief turned to resolve to continue his work in the community. “I decided I wasn’t going to Mt. Hope Cemetery with a piece of concrete that said Freddie Thomas,” she said in 2024. “I wanted to do something to help folks.”

Within months of her husband’s death, she founded the Freddie L. Thomas Foundation, which sponsored and coordinated a number of community activities. One of the most prominent was a series of holiday dinners on Thanksgiving and Christmas that drew hundreds of people.

The foundation owned the Triangle Community Center on Andrews Street. The center provided space for many nonprofit service providers. It was sold in 1982 and is now known as Harro East.

Another project came to her one day in the 1980s as she was walking home from the pharmacy. She had just taken pills and needed a glass of water but was turned away at several restaurants. Stung, she raised money for a three-spigot water fountain outside the Liberty Pole. She dubbed it the Miss Jane Pittman Drinking Fountain, after the character in Ernest Gaines’ novel. Gaines attended the opening ceremony in 1989.

Midge Thomas lived for most of her life on Liberty Pole Way in a small house that she made into a sort of informal community center. She was a strong advocate for downtown and in recent years she helped with beautification projects through Downtown ROCS. The Midge Thomas Community Garden, at North Clinton Avenue and Pleasant Street, was dedicated in her honor in August.

It was one of many accolades she received in her later years, including designation as a New York State Woman of Distinction in 2023. Scores of plaques and certificates covered a wall in the front room of her house.

The last such honor came just this week. One day before she died, a mural inspired by her was unveiled on the side of Abilene Bar and Lounge, right next to her house. It was painted by local artist Shawnee Hill and shows Black and white hands, fingers interlaced, inside a circle of flowers.

“Midge lived a life full of purpose, deep devotion, and determination,” Mayor Malik Evans said in a statement. “She and her beloved late husband, Dr. Freddie Thomas, played a powerful role in Rochester’s Civil Rights history, advocating for equity, inclusion, and justice. … She has made a profound impact on our lives and in our community, for which we will forever be grateful.”

Midge Thomas leaves no direct survivors. Funeral arrangements have not yet been made. As a final homage to her late husband, she arranged for her body to be donated to medical research.

She lost the ability to speak for some time before her death, Randall said. Her last words, instead, were a pair of messages she wrote out in a faint hand.

One was a note to the doctors and nurses: “Thank you.” The other, a message to a visitor, was put up on the hospital room wall. It said only: “Helping others.”

“She just cared about people,” Randall said. “Right to her deathbed, she was still caring about people.”

Justin Murphy is a Rochester Beacon contributing writer. He is the research and communications coordinator for Our Local History and a former reporter for the Democrat and Chronicle.

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