The late Congressman John Lewis (D-Ga.) came to Sunflower County during the early years of the civil rights movement, but he did not come to hold a sit-in at a restaurant or a voter registration drive.
Lewis, who died this past weekend at the age of 80, came to Sunflower County by way of a prison bus during the summer of 1961.
He had been arrested in Jackson on a charge of disorderly conduct and disturbing the peace.
“We arrived in Jackson at the Trailways Bus Station there and we were arrested for refusing to move on, and disorderly conduct, and disturbing the peace,” Lewis said in a 1973 interview. “When the city jail got too full, they transferred us to the Hinds County jail and from Hinds County jail we were transferred to Parchman.”
He spent 37 days in Parchman before his release.
Sunflower County civil rights icon Charles McLaurin this week recalled his interactions with Lewis and C.T. Vivian, another veteran of the movement who also passed away over the weekend at age 85.
“I had met C.T., but I knew John,” McLaurin told The E-T this week. “The nation really lost, in the two of those guys, C.T. and John, disciples of non-violence. They believed that one day there would be a beloved community. John truly believed what Dr. King said, ‘One day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed.’ John really believed it.”
McLaurin was involved with the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee from 1962-68, and Lewis was the leader of the group until 1966. McLaurin said he and Lewis interacted at SNCC meetings during the 60s, but he also got to know him later in life, when the late congressman returned a couple of times to Sunflower County.
During one visit, Lewis was part of a group called Faith in Politics, and the group had taken McLaurin’s tour called Landmarks of the Civil Rights Movement in the Mississippi Delta.
“We were coming up Highway 43 that runs right up to the front of Parchman coming onto 49, and he was excited,” McLaurin recalled. “He got up, and he was talking about it. He was agreeing with what I was saying about Parchman.”
Lewis’ nearly 40 days in the notorious state penitentiary was rough from the start.
“While we were taking a shower, there was a guard standing there with a gun pointed on you while you showered,” he said in the 1973 interview. “If you had a beard or a mustache, any hair, you had to shave your beard off, you had to shave your mustache off. After taking the showers in twos, you were placed in a cell and given a Mississippi undershirt and a pair of shorts. During our stay in Mississippi Penitentiary we didn't have any visitors. We were able to write one person a letter. The second day Governor [unknown] came by with some state officials. We all got out within a forty-day period in order to appeal the charges.”
Lewis would be arrested a total of 40 times during the civil rights movement.
He was also assaulted during multiple marches, including Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama in March 1965.
“Every billy club, baseball bat or whatever the officials were swinging, unfortunately his head caught it,” McLaurin said.
Through it all, Lewis never lost faith, and he was never angry about the arrests or the beatings, McLaurin said.
“No, he wasn’t’ bitter,” McLaurin said. “In fact, I’ve never seen him look bitter. I look at some of the pictures of him on TV, and he’s John Lewis, and he had all this faith that some good was going to come out this chaos.”
McLaurin said that was a trait shared by the likes of Fannie Lou Hamer, who would begin her legacy of civil rights activism in Ruleville in August 1962, just a few miles from where Lewis served his short jail term the year prior.
