Durant is a city in Holmes County, Mississippi, United States. It was founded in 1858 as a station on the Mississippi Central Railroad, later part of the Illinois Central. Durant was named for Louis Durant, a Choctaw chief who had lived on a bluff just across the nearby Big Black River before Indian Removal.Before the Civil War, this was known as the "dark corner of the county." It was an area of cotton plantations and numerous enslaved African-American workers. The area is largely rural and agricultural. The population of the city was 2,673 at the 2010 census, down from 2,932 at the 2000 census.