Biography
Lawrence Guyot was a Tougaloo College student and SNCC field organizer who became chairman of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party from its 1964 founding. During the June 1963 Winona jail crisis, he arrived to seek help for Fannie Lou Hamer and the other detained fieldworkers; police then arrested him and beat him in Montgomery County Jail. Across his civil-rights career he was arrested an estimated 100+ times in Mississippi for voter-registration work. He led the MFDP's 1964 challenge to the all-white Mississippi delegation at the Atlantic City Democratic Convention and continued political organizing in Washington, D.C. until his death.
Contemporary source context and date limits
The February 11, 1964 Student Voice, page 1, reports that Lawrence Guyot was then in Forrest County jail and appealing a conviction for contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Peter Stoner was arrested outside that jail on February 5 while trying to visit Guyot. This documents an additional detention context in early 1964, separate from the June 1963 Winona confinement already recorded. The article does not establish Guyot’s exact admission, sentence day or discharge for the 1964 detention, so no new custody interval or duration is invented.
