Elected as a Democrat to the Mississippi House of Representatives for a single term in 1959, Hurst supported segregation and opposed the civil rights movement, which had expanded into Amite County by the early 1960s.

Hurst is noted for killing his neighbor and childhood friend Herbert Lee, an African American activist who was working to register black voters in Amite County.

Despite considerable evidence indicating that Hurst was the aggressor, he was found to have acted in self-defense by an all-white jury at an inquest held the same day and never charged with a crime.

A member of a white supremacist Citizens' Council in Amite County, Hurst vehemently opposed the civil rights movement, which had begun trying to register African American voters in the South.

However, the Amite County courtroom in which the inquest was held was full of armed white men, and witnesses were pressured to testify in Hurst's favor.

Allen later discussed the case with SNCC civil rights activists including Julian Bond and reconsidered his testimony, believing that Hurst was the aggressor and had in fact murdered Lee.

[3] Adopting a simple registration process that was typical of northern states, and to show the desire of blacks to vote, they organized the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, open to all.

[3] Sixty thousand blacks joined this party, and elected 68 delegates to go to the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey that summer.

Activists continually petitioned for Hurst's criminal case to be similarly reopened, but no formal legal action was initiated against him by the time of his death in 1990.