Tinkham served as a member of the Boston Common Council in 1897 and 1898.[1] After this first venture into politics he resumed his education at Harvard Law School. He was admitted to the bar in 1899 and commenced practice in Boston.[1] Tinkham returned to public office, serving as a member of the Boston Board of Aldermen from 1900 to 1902.[1][2][note 1]
Tinkham spent the next several years working as a lawyer. In 1910 he returned to public service, being elected as a member of the Massachusetts State Senate, where he served from 1910 to 1912.[1][2]
During World War I, he served in the military;[1] Tinkham would later tell Life magazine that while touring the front as a Congressman he fired the first American shot against the Austrians.[3]
Tinkham was elected as a Republican to the Sixty-fourth Congress and to the thirteen succeeding Congresses (March 4, 1915 – January 3, 1943).[1] During that time Tinkham was nicknamed "the conscience of the House" for his efforts to protect voting rights for African Americans,[2] in part by highlighting of the South's disproportionate representation in the House related to that region's voting population.[4] In 1937, a California newspaper reported "Representative Tinkham of Massachusetts, on the other hand, is emphatic in the view that we are heading for an alliance with England, France and Russia against Germany, Italy and Japan and he favors playing a lone hand and attending strictly to our own business".[5]
Tinkham did not stand for renomination in 1942. He continued to practice law in Boston until his retirement; died in Cramerton, North Carolina, on August 28, 1956; interment in Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston.[1]
In his spare time, he went on safaris in Kenya.[3]
^The Boston Common Council and the Boston Board of Aldermen were later combined into the Boston City Council, following a rewrite of Boston's city charter.
^ abcOffice of History and Preservation, Office of the Clerk (2008). "The Negroes' Temporary Farewell". Black Americans in Congress, 1870–2007. Retrieved 2012-12-08.
^ abLang, Will (December 16, 1940). "Tinkham the Mighty Hunter". Life. Vol. 9, no. 25. pp. 69–72, 74, 76. ISSN0024-3019. Retrieved 2012-12-08. He notes that he fired the first American shot against the Austrians in the World War. The Italians were conducting the visiting Congressman along the Austrian front in 1917 and allowed him to pull the lanyard of a field piece. (p. 71)
