In 1961, an eclectic group of Civil Rights activists known as the Freedom Riders dared to integrate the interstate bus system. And for their “crime” they were thrown in the most notoriously brutal prison in the American South, Parchman Farm Penitentiary. The story behind their inspirational stand for justice is currently onstage at the Guthrie Theater in Mike Wiley’s music-infused play, The Parchman Hour. Part celebration, part call to action, The Parchman Hour honors those young people who changed the course of U.S. history. Among them was future Georgia Congressman John Lewis, who walked out of Parchman Farm to become one of the country’s greatest Civil Rights leaders. I’d heard about Parchman in the same way I’d heard about Mississippi – in tones of horror and terms of brutality. In a South filled with nightmarishly inhuman prisons and work farms, Parchman Penitentiary was infamous for being the worst. At that time it was basically a state unto itself, with its own laws.
We were led into a cement building where deputies with cattle prods stood by while we were ordered to strip naked. For two and a half hours we stood wearing nothing, while we waited for … well, we didn’t know what we were waiting for. I could see that this was an attempt to break us down, to humiliate and dehumanize us, to rob us of our identity and self-worth. I had read that such methods were used by oppressors throughout history. When we were finally led, two by two, into a shower room guarded by a sergeant with a rifle, I thought of the concentration camps in Germany. This was 1961 in America, yet here we were, treated like animals for using the wrong bathroom. Those of us with facial hair were ordered to shave in the shower. I had none, but I felt fear, real fear, as I watched my friends, some with visibly shaking hands, cut off their moustaches and beards. Finally we were led to a maximum-security wing and put in cells, two to a cell, segregated by race. We were here, we were told, for our own protection from the inmates who would “kick our asses.”
Again we waited naked, this time for an hour and a half, until we were issued our prison uniforms: an olive green T-shirt and shorts.No change of clothes. Simply a T-shirt and shorts. The monotony was tremendous. We had no reading material other than the Bible, a palm-sized copy of the New Testament, which was given to each of us by the local Salvation Army. I didn’t read my Bible; I didn’t feel like reading it. But I kept it. I still have that Bible today, with the date June 11, 1961, inscribed inside its cover. The guards had been ordered by the governor to be careful with us, prompting complaints from some of the deputies. “Guv’nor,” one of the guards reportedly asked, “how we gon’ stop their singin’ if we cain’t go upside their heads?” The fact that physical punishment was prohibited forced them to be creative. On one occasion a fire hose was brought in and we were blasted with jets of water. Giant fans were then set up and turned on full blast, freezing us in our flooded cells.
On especially hot days – and there were many, this being summer in Mississippi – the windows were kept closed and we baked in the airless heat. Ceiling lights were kept on around the clock, making it difficult to sleep. One of the women, who were kept in another building, miscarried while a prison guard watched and did nothing. One day our singing and preaching prompted a deputy to threaten to take our mattresses away. Hank Thomas hollered from his cell, “Take my mattress! I’ll keep my soul!” With that, everyone – or almost everyone – threw his mattress against his cell bars. Two who did not were Fred Leonard and his cellmate, a tall, lanky, outspoken student from Howard University named Stokely Carmichael. Stokely and Fred were both totally committed to our cause, but they didn’t necessarily agree with us on tactics. And they did not want to yield their mattresses. Leonard wound up clinging to his even when a guard began pulling it out into the hall. I will never forget the sight of that guard dragging Fred Leonard’s mattress down that hallway, with Fred firmly attached, singing “I’m Gonna Tell God How You Treat Me,” accompanied by a chorus of our cheers.
We had no idea how long we’d be kept at Parchman. A week passed, then two. One day an elderly round-bellied white man in a suit and tie came down our hallway with a group of visitors behind him, showing us off as if we were attractions in a zoo. It was Governor Barnett, demonstrating for a group of his colleagues what happened to “outside agitators” in his state. Finally, on July 7, three weeks and a day after we’d been driven to Parchman – and three days after Independence Day, which we spent behind bars – our cell doors were opened, we were handed the clothes we’d been wearing when we arrived, and we were walked to the prison’s front gate, where a small group of lawyers and friends were waiting to greet us. There were hugs, but no tears. A line of cars was waiting to drive us away. On the trip back to Jackson, I thought about the fact that we had just about literally been through hell, first in Anniston, then in Birmingham, then in Montgomery, and now here at Parchman.
Freedom Riders were flooding the South now, scores of buses filled with black and white passengers bound to break down the walls of segregation in these states. Before the summer was over, dozens of buses would pass through Georgia and Alabama and Mississippi and Louisiana, carrying riders who would continue the work we began that May. But that work was just beginning. I knew that now. If there was anything I learned on that long, bloody bus trip of 1961, it was this – that we were in for a long, bloody fight here in the American South. And I intended to stay in the middle of it. Excerpted from “Freedom Ride: Mr. Greyhound” in Walking with the Wind: a Memoir of the Movement, Simon & Schuster, 1998. Read Freedom Rider Claire O'Connor's story here.Within minutes of meeting James Cox, co-founder of innovative mattress company Simba Sleep, I’m drawing a diagram of his product – or my interpretation of it as he whizzes through its composition. Rather than the traditional springs or trendy memory foam, Simba’s mattress is a layer cake of unique ID foam, some memory and a conical pocket spring layer – i.e the springs can collapse in on themselves.
There is just one Simba mattress. “We wanted to come up with a product that wasn’t just good value, but pioneering,” says Cox. “This is a mattress that can be used by 95 per cent of the population.” The idea behind this is that most of what we think we know about mattresses is wrong. For starters, “a lot of people buy a firm mattress because they think that’s good for them. What counts is the support the springs give you and the comfort foam provides – so that’s what we worked on.” Simba tested over 80 prototypes in conjunction with the Sleep to Live Institute, and R&D continues, with every two hundredth mattress being assessed. And it’s not just a decent product. “The internet enables you to create efficiencies in any industry. The mattress market is utterly archaic; it’s unfair to the consumer.” Cox explains that the mark-up on mattresses is extreme, and we buy in a psychologically interesting way anyway. “If you went into a shop knowing you had £2,000 to spend on a mattress, you’d feel like you were getting a real bargain – and good quality product – if it said reduced from £4,000 to £2,000.
But there’s no science in the mattresses market at the moment – you can claim what you like and mark-up how you want.” Simba is a direct-to-consumer business. That means a very short supply chain – the firm licenses out the making of the mattresses to a factory in Derby, and Cox says it’s three times cheaper than a mattress of the same quality. But you can’t go into a store and have a quick bounce. What you can do is order a mattress, keep it for 100 days and send it back if you don’t like it. So far, with £2.5m in sales made in the first three months of trading, and a run rate of £20m over six months, Simba still has single digit percentage return rates. What’s more, your mattress arrives in a box measuring one metre by 50cm by 50cm – and unfurls once you’ve got it in position. This is where the conical springs come into their own: “because they collapse into themselves, we can keep a mattress in a box for nine months without it getting damaged.” One starts to wonder how Cox became so interested in mattresses.
“I was looking for a real-life problem to solve,” explains Cox. “There are a lot of new businesses out there where the founders then have to create a problem. And there are plenty of super companies out there. But I prefer things where you can actually see the tangible need and outcome.” This has always been the case for Cox. He dropped out of Bristol University, where he was studying business, to try his hand as an equities trader in the City. Three years later, he’d set up his own brokerage. “I guess I knew already what I wanted to do. I went to university to have some fun, but it wasn’t that fun.” After that, he pottered over to Africa looking for investment opportunities to bring back to the UK market – predominantly in arts-related sectors like photography. And last year he founded JXC Ventures, a holding company for his personal interests. Meanwhile, he met co-founder Andrew McClements, a mattress industry stalwart with 31 years’ experience in the mattress manufacture business, and started planning Simba.
It’s important to the pair that they stay independent and continue selling directly to their customers, but they have entered a partnership with John Lewis. It’s a special case because “we really like what the brand stands for. We don’t think we need any more partnerships in the UK, though perhaps once we’ve expanded abroad we’d consider it.” And Cox is storming on with expansion. Simba is in 27 John Lewises; next month, it’ll be in all 44. It’s expanding into Europe this month, and Asia and the Middle East by the end of the year. “The process won’t change for Europe, certainly. It’s really about tailoring the advertising and marketing to particular areas.” The “boxing up element” of a Simba mattress means it’s very easy, comparatively speaking, to transport. Doing so “will cost us £3 a mattress on the back of a ship because of the way they slot together.” If you’ve ever wondered where your mattress is made, it’s probably in the UK – because they’re so clunky to move, most are made where bought and used.
I fire a series of increasingly bizarre questions at Cox, mostly collated from colleagues: “what’s the heaviest you can be to use a Simba bed?” The answer is 19 stone. Apparently, any heavier and you’d “need a specialist bed anyway”. Impressively, a Simba mattress will keep a glass of wine unspilled at one end, even if you jump on the other – because those individual conical pockets mean that it’s “zoned”. So if you’re light as a feather and your bedfellow is rather hefty, you won’t be pulled into the middle. And if you’re wondering about why the company’s called Simba, it’s a pet name for Cox’s other half. “We put 20 names on a piece of paper but couldn’t get past that. I suppose it’s like ‘king of sleeps’ – and soft and cuddly. A bedroom should be to relationships like a kitchen is to the home, and we want to educate people that there is a viable alternative that focuses on your wellness and wellbeing. If you’re not well rested, what’s the point?”