[6] Stromquist was an active participant in the United States civil rights movement.
Having first enrolled as an undergraduate at Yale University, Stromquist dropped out in 1963, traveling to India with the Experiment in International Living and studying and working in Germany from 1963 to 1964.
He returned to work with the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee as a volunteer, helping to organize the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and register African-Americans to vote in Vicksburg, Mississippi during Freedom Summer in 1964.
He returned to Vicksburg during the summer of 1965 to continue that work and after graduating in 1966, joined the "Meredith March" in Mississippi from near Greenwood to the outskirts of Jackson.
From 1966 to 1968 he served as a volunteer in Tanzania, East Africa with the American Friends Service Committee, working in Ujamaa (African socialist) villages.