On July 7th, 1961, John Lewis was released from Parchman Penitentiary in Mississippi after 37 days in prison on a charge of "disorderly conduct" — that is, refusing to follow segregation law. Lewis was a civil-rights leader with the Southern Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and he and other activists (black and white) spent the summer of 1961 leading a Freedom Ride to protest segregation in the Deep South.

Today, now-Congressman John Lewis (D-GA) commemorated his release from prison by tweeting out his mugshot:

53 yrs ago today I was released from Parchman Penitentiary after being arrested in Jackson for using "white" restroom pic.twitter.com/9QAI4voo1M — John Lewis (@repjohnlewis) July 7, 2014

This wasn't Lewis' first arrest, or his last: he's been arrested 45 times during his career, most recently during an immigrant-rights protest in 2013. But Parchman was an infamous prison, and its treatment of the Freedom Riders in 1961 has become legendary. The governor of Mississippi himself instructed Parchman guards to "break their spirit."

Lewis talked about his ordeal during an interview in 1973 for the Southern Oral History Program (a project based out of the University of North Carolina). Here's what he said about the 1961 arrest at the time (emphasis added):