Calvin Bess (November 17, 1944—August 5, 1967) was a Tallahassee-born civil rights worker and voting rights activist who was killed in West Point, Mississippi in 1967 while registering African-American voters. A student at Florida A&M University at the time of his death, Calvin was a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), who had registered voters in Florida, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi. The right to vote was his passion. He had seen people in Northern Florida denied this basic right and forced to live with the consequences of poor representation. He had seen outrageous literacy tests and $2 poll taxes as part of a system that gave voting privileges to whites and denied them to Blacks. Calvin was honored for having paid the ultimate price when the Tallahassee-Leon County Civil Rights Heritage Walk was dedicated on September 30, 2013. On May 22, 2023, Russell Street in the Bond Subdivision was renamed “George Calvin Bess, Jr. Way.”