Gus Courts

Gus Courts (May 2, 1887 – April 23, 1969) was an American grocery store proprietor and African-American civil rights leader. In 1953, Courts and Rev. George W. Lee founded the Humphreys County, Mississippi chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). As he led a voting rights and registration drive in the 1950s, Courts was shot and wounded at his store and later testified to Congress about racial terror in Mississippi.

Biography Gus Courts was born on May 2, 1887, in Pickens, Mississippi to parents who had been enslaved prior to the Civil War. As an adult, Courts eventually owned a grocery store in Belzoni, Mississippi. Courts was involved in the local civil rights movement in the 1940s. He cooperated with the Regional Council of Negro Leadership, and in 1953 co-founded the Humphreys County chapter of the NAACP with Rev. George Lee. no African American had voted in the county since Reconstruction in the 19th century. Courts and Lee were able to persuade 400 potential voters to pay the poll tax, as the first step in registering to vote in the county at the time, and a difficult to meet barrier for a largely impoverished farm-working population. Despite physical and economic threats from the county's white power structure and obstruction from county registrars, 94 of them took the dangerous and difficult step to register. Voting registrations fell after the murder, but on the next election day, Courts held a meeting at his store and 22 people volunteered to go to the polls to vote. Although warned of the danger, they marched to the court house. There, county clerks handed them questionnaires about their identities and civil rights opinions—all were refused the vote. which forced multiple civil rights activists to flee the state to escape to Chicago. Courts, starting again at age 65, opened and ran a new store. He died on April 23, 1969, in Chicago, never realizing his wish to return to Mississippi.