The Mississippi native was among the ranks of Medgar Evers, Fannie Lous Hamer, Bob Moses and others who helped register Blacks in Mississippi to vote. Guyot served the organization as a director of the 1964 Freedom Summer Project.
Guyot also co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and worked toward the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. During the Movement, he endured severe beatings, the conditions of Southern prisons, and violence from jailhouse law enforcement.
He lobbied for Washington D.C. statehood and for voting rights until his death. He made it a point to vote early so that his vote would be counted in case his health failed prior to Election Day.
Susan Glisson of the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation at Ole Miss, called him "a towering figure, a real warrior for freedom and justice." Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton called Guyot "an unsung hero" of the Movement. "Because of Larry Guyot, I understood what it meant to live with terror and to walk straight into it."
Learn more about Guyot here.
