Curtis Conway Bryant, a Tylertown native born in 1917, was a major force in the civil rights movement of southwest Mississippi. He helped establish one of the earliest NAACP branches in the region and, after being elected president of the Pike County branch in 1954, expanded its membership by fifty percent and served as president of the McComb NAACP for more than thirty-three years. He later served as vice president of the state NAACP branch under field secretary Medgar Evers. Because he worked for the railroad, he was less dependent on local whites for his livelihood than many local Black residents, and he also ran a barber shop at his home that offered African American newspapers, magazines, and broadsides to the community. Bryant led large voter registration drives, and in 1961 he invited SNCC field secretary Bob Moses to stay at his home, where they organized a voter registration drive in southwest Mississippi; Moses later used the McComb experience as a model for the Freedom Summer campaign. During the violent summer of 1964, which Bryant called "hell on earth," McComb became known as the bombing capital, and the Ku Klux Klan bombed his barbershop, house, and church because of his NAACP work. He was also arrested and jailed numerous times during his long career as an activist. In 1965 he testified before the United States Commission on Civil Rights against discriminatory voting practices, and his testimony, along with that of other civil rights leaders, helped pave the way for President Lyndon Johnson's signing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Five years later, working with the NAACP, he won a class action suit that created equal employment opportunities for minorities in the railroad industry and helped desegregate public facilities, schools, and the hospital in McComb. In later years he remained committed to justice and equality by establishing the Southwest Mississippi Head Start Program and Southwest Mississippi Opportunity, Inc., and he received numerous honors, including the Medgar Evers Medallion Award and the NAACP's Aaron Henry Award.
