How You Can Overcome Any Fear
John Lewis overcame his worst fear at a prison in Mississippi—a lesson for how we all can thrive by confronting that which terrifies us.
In the summer of 1961, at a Greyhound bus station in Jackson, Mississippi, John Lewis took a sip of water from a whites-only fountain. He did it intentionally. He was only 21 but already a leader in the Civil Rights movement, the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and a key organizer in that summer’s Freedom Rides. He knew he’d be arrested for that sip and was almost gleeful when local cops hauled him to jail.
Then they transferred him to a prison called Parchman.
Every Black man in the South knew about Parchman. “A separate, truly evil place created to make sure that there was a worse hell than everyday life for Blacks in Mississippi,” David Halberstam later wrote. Guards frog-marched Lewis to the maximum-security wing, stripped him of his clothes, watched Lewis shower while pointing their loaded rifles at him and joking about his genitals, then frog-marched him back to his cell, naked. They cut off his facial hair, threw at him a pair of green khaki shorts and an undershirt labelled MISSISSIPPI STATE PENITENTIARY, and told him to sleep on the rough mattress in the corner.
The guards and prison staff denied Lewis the right to see his fellow Freedom Riders…
