He attended Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire where he was a member of Phi Sigma Kappa, earning an A.B.

[citation needed] He served as member of the Board of Election Commissioners of St. Louis County in 1942.

[citation needed] The Civil Rights Act of 1964 originated in Curtis' office in 1962, and it was mainly Republican pressure from Curtis and his fellow Republican Judiciary Committee member William McCulloch of Ohio that forced John F. Kennedy to make his first, hesitant message on civil rights in April 1963.

Curtis' defense of civil rights was rooted partly in the Lincoln tradition of the GOP, but more simply in the belief that civil rights were at the base of the American philosophy of government and Judeo-Christian morality and that their defense was "the most fundamental issue that confronts any government at any time," as he wrote in 1952.

He was an unsuccessful candidate for the United States Senate again in 1974, winning only 39% of the vote against incumbent Thomas Eagleton.