Durant is a city near the central eastern border of Holmes County, Mississippi, United States, and Big Black River.

[3] A dozen mineral springs resorts were identified in the Works Progress Administration (WPA) Guide to Mississippi (1938), written during the Great Depression.

[3] Located 3 miles west of Durant, it reportedly was one of many sites used as a hospital to treat the more than 10,000 casualties of Confederate troops following the Battle of Shiloh in Tennessee in April 1862.

[5] After the war, the hotel was adapted for other uses, first as a private girls' boarding school, educating the daughters of planters and others who could afford it.

The hotel is believed to be the only surviving mineral springs resort of what were a dozen in the state during the 1930s, according to the WPA Guide to Mississippi (1938).

[3] Beginning in 1890, white Democrats in Mississippi passed a new constitution and laws disenfranchising African Americans and closing them out of formal political participation.

Jim Crow laws were passed confining them to second-class status, which persisted for decades past the middle of the 20th century.

Although thousands of African Americans left the state in the Great Migration, seeking better opportunities elsewhere, those who remained in Holmes County in working to regain their constitutional rights, including to register and vote.

About 1935, Hazel Brannon Smith, a recent college graduate from Gadsden, Alabama, bought the local weekly newspaper, the Durant News, which had been failing.

She was among the first journalists to cover the African-American community for its positive contributions, for instance, noting in 1943 during World War II that a local civic group had donated money to the Red Cross.

Later she became well known for her editorial writing about the civil rights movement; Holmes County had many activists involved in education and voter registration.

[6] The area is still largely rural and agricultural, but industrial-scale farming and mechanization reduced the need for labor decades ago.

The historic brick train depot (see photo above) is to be restored for new uses and is being highlighted as part of the area's heritage tourism.

Since the late 20th century, missionary nurses from orders outside the state have been among those working on behalf of poor city and county residents.

[7] Durant is in eastern Holmes County on the west side of the valley of the Big Black River.