Mr.
Lawrence Guyot: Civil Rights Activist
Lawrence Guyot was born in Pass Christian, Mississippi
July 17, 1939. He went to Tougaloo College on a scholarship at age 17, and
there he learned that black citizens in most of Mississippi could not
register to vote. While in school, he became a SNCC field secretary working
throughout Mississippi on voter education and registration. He and other
SNCC workers taught local people about voting, its importance, and about
election law. He was jailed numerous times, beaten nearly to death, and
sent to Parchman Penitentiary with other Civil Rights workers.
He directed the 1964 Freedom Summer Project in
Hattiesburg and was the founding chairman of the Mississippi Freedom
Democratic Party. Guyot was an elected delegate to the 1964 Democratic
National Convention but attending would have caused forfeiture of a property
bond posted to secure his release from jail. However, the delegates who
went to the convention were prepared to make their case as to why they
represented the ideals of the Democratic Party. Though the MFDP didn’t
unseat the regulars in 1964, never again was a delegation segregated by
either race or sex seated at the Democratic National Convention. Guyot also
worked on the 1965 Congressional Challenge to unseat the Mississippi
Congressional Delegation. The case made by MFDP’s Congressional Challenge
was key to the passage of a strong Voting Rights Act. After serving as a
delegate of Mississippi’s first integrated delegation to the Democratic
National Convention in 1968, he moved to Washington, D.C., graduated from
Rutgers Law School, and worked for Washington D.C. where he worked for the
city, served as an ANC Commissioner, and has remained a Civil Rights
Activist working tirelessly to educate young people about empowerment.
This year, at the 2011 Annual Bridge Crossing Jubilee,
in Alabama, Mr. Guyot was one of the Freedom Flame Awards honorees who were
considered one of the “giants” of the Voting Rights Movement, and the
passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
