Being gerrymandered outside of the Tuskegee City limits taught Negro citizens a fundamental lesson- they must not support institutions which deny them participation on the same basis as other citizens.

Jessie Parkhurst Guzman was born in 1898 in Savannah, Georgia. She received a Bachelor of Arts from Howard University in Washington D.C. in 1919 and a Master of Arts from Columbia University in New York in 1924. She first came to Tuskegee Institute in 1923 as a research assistant to sociologist Monroe Work, the Director of Records and Research, who had been a family friend in Savannah. She served as Tuskegee Institute’s Dean of Women from 1938 - 1944, and then went back to the Department of Records and Research, becoming its director in 1946 and serving in that capacity until her retirement in 1964. As director of Records and Research, Guzman put together and edited two editions of the Negro Year Book in 1947 and 1952.

Alongside her career, Jessie Parkhurst Guzman was an active member of the Tuskegee Civic Association (TCA), which was established in 1941 to lead and organize the Black fight for equal citizenship in Tuskegee and Macon County. She held leadership and committee positions in the TCA, delivered speeches at mass meetings, and eventually ran for public office. In 1954, Guzman ran for a seat on the Macon County Board of Education. She was the first person of color to run for elected office in Macon County since Reconstruction and the first Black woman to seek elected office in the state of Alabama. Read a speech she gave during her candidacy here. She did not win the school board seat, but her campaign sent a message to the white establishment that Tuskegee’s Black population was serious about getting political representation. In 1964, she was one of the first eight Black poll workers to serve in a Macon County election. In 1966, she ran again for public office - this time for the state legislature as a representative from District Number 31, but she lost to a white opponent. She also served as assistant secretary of the Southern Conference Educational Fund. She remained active in Civil Rights advocacy, and in 1984 published Crusade for Civic Democracy: The Story of the Tuskegee Civic Association, 1941-1970, which is a detailed history of the TCA and its work.