This graphic novel is the first in a series telling the story of civil rights leader and former Democratic Congressman, John Robert Lewis, one of the "Big Six" leaders who organized the March on Washington in 1963. March opens in the present and then flashes back to Lewis' humble beginnings on his family's farm in Alabama.
John Lewis wakes up the morning of January 20, 2009 - the beginning of a very special day. Lewis shows up at the Cannon House Office Building where he meets Rosa Parks. Suddenly three people enter his office, a lady with her two sons, Jacob and Esau. She has brought them to see Congressman John Lewis' office. She wants them to "know how far we've come..."
As he points out some of the key photographs in the picture, one of the boys asks him why he has so many chickens in his office. This triggers Lewis' memory of growing up and he begins to tell them his story. He starts with when it was his responsibility to care for his family's chickens. They lived on 110 acres of land in Pike County, Alabama that his father bought in 1940 for three hundred dollars. Lewis knew all the different kinds of chickens on their farm and even named some of them. He loved them so much, he would conduct funerals for them when they died, and he would deliver a eulogy. He often protested his parents treatment of the chickens and wouldn't be at family chicken dinners.
John's eyes were opened when he was taken on a trip north by his uncle, Otis Carter. Otis lived in Dothan, where he was a teacher and school principal. The trip north meant no stopping at restaurants because there was no where for them to eat as black people. Uncle Otis knew which gas stations to stop at, offering colored washrooms. Alabama, Tennessee and Kentucky were the states they had to be careful in. Once they got to Ohio, they felt safer. In Buffalo, New York, Lewis was thrilled; the city was busy and his uncle's home had white people living side by side with them. Lewis was able to visit a department store. He saw that life was different and after that trip he was different.
When Lewis started riding the bus to school that fall he could see once again how different life was for black Americans. Roads into "colored" communities were not paved until whites had to drive through them. The books and buses in Black schools were hand-me-downs. White schools were nice with playground equipment while the colored schools were cinder block with a dirt field to play in. Lewis also noticed the people working in the fields or on the prison gangs were usually blacks too. But sometimes, Lewis' family needed help on the farm. His father wanted him to stay home and help out but Lewis would hide.
Then in 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the doctrine of "separate but equal" upon which segregation was based, was ruled unconstitutional. Lewis was certain things would change, that he would be going to an integrated school with a nice bus. Lewis noticed that the ministers at church never mentioned the injustices that were happening.
In 1955, he heard a young preacher out of Atlanta, Georgia on the radio. His name was Martin Luther King Jr. and he preached the social Gospel. That spring another ruling by the Supreme Court, which struck down segregation, saw segregationists insist they would defy the law. In August, the body of fourteen-year-old Emmett Till, a black boy visiting Money, Mississippi was pulled from the Tallahatchie River. He had been forcibly taken from his relatives' home after calling a white woman, "baby". Despite the testimony of a black farmer who witnessed what really happened, the white men were acquitted.
On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks refused to sit at the back of the bus and was arrested. Martin Luther King led a boycott of the buses in Montgomery, Alabama. Lewis was inspired by King and so five days before his sixteenth birthday, he preached his first sermon.
The woman in his office wants to know how he managed to attend college. He tells her that his mother helped him by encouraging him to apply to the American Baptist Theological Seminary, a school for Black men and women. He was accepted Lewis got a job washing dishes and serving food. But he wanted to do more for Black rights.
Lewis wanted to attend Troy State, which was closer to his parents' home, but Black students weren't accepted. He applied as a transfer student but when he never heard back he wrote to Martin Luther King Jr. He also began communicating with Rev. Ralph Abernathy and a lawyer, Fred Gray who represented Rosa Parks.
In the spring of 1958, Lewis met up with Fred Gray and Martin Luther King Jr. After questioning him, they told Lewis that if he wanted to attend Troy, he would have to sue both the State of Alabama and the Board of Education. Because he wasn't old enough, Lewis would need the permission of his parents. They also pointed out that he and his parents would most likely face serious repercussions. Ultimately, Lewis' parents decided against giving him their permission to proceed.
Lewis is interrupted in telling his story and told he must leave to meet Rosa Parks, but is also told he has a message from Jim Lawson. In 1958, Jim Lawson ran a series of workshops on non-violent action and passive resistance. After this, Lewis and others, as part of the Nashville Student Movement began protesting segregation at department store lunch counters. It was the beginning for Lewis, of real action, nonviolent protest to end segregation in Nashville and across America.
Discussion
March is the first of three comic books that tell the story of John Robert Lewis, a congressman and civil rights leader. Lewis, who was born near Troy, Alabama, was the son of sharecroppers and by his own admission grew up poor. Most of the area where he lived and grew up had few white people, yet everything was segregated. He and his siblings were denied the use of the local public library, being told it was for whites only. His trip north to Buffalo, New York opened Lewis's eyes to the extent of segregation and its impact on himself and his family. He saw that things could be profoundly different and he wanted to change America, supposedly founded on the belief that "all men are created equal" and yet not in practice.
Lewis had to counter not only white America and its segregationist practices, but the views of the older Black generation exemplified by Thurgood Marshall and local Black ministers who seemed to want to maintain the status quo. And yet, as is told in March, Lewis and the Nashville Student Movement were successful in their first nonviolent protests.
The beginning of Lewis's civil rights work is a story of courage and determination. Lewis acted on his belief that all men are created equal and that he and other African Americans had the same rights as white Americans. To achieve the goal of dismantling segregation, Lewis and many other civil rights leaders began to implement nonviolent forms of protest, at great personal risk. He states that he felt this calling at a young age and it seemed to intensify as he grew older and saw the world as it really was.
Lewis' story is told with the assistance of Andrew Aydin, who served as his Digital Director & Policy Advisor while Lewis was a Congressional representative. It is told as a story within a story: the book begins with Lewis getting ready to meet Rosa Parks in 2009 in preparation for attending the inauguration of Barak Obama as president of the United States. Illustrating Lewis' story is the artwork of Nate Powell, an accomplished and award-winning graphic novelist.
The graphic novel format makes John Lewis' story accessible to readers of all ages and backgrounds. The visual character of the graphic novel conveys the reality of what segregation entailed for millions of Black Americans in the 20th century and highlights the significant efforts these early civil rights activists had to resort to, in order to undo a deeply entrenched system of discrimination and hatred. It also visually portrays the violence, hatred and ugliness of those determined to prevent Black Americans from gaining their God-given right to be treated with respect, dignity and equality.
March is a book for people because it is only in reading about and studying the past, can we make a better future for everyone.
Book Details:
The March by John Lews, Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell
Marietta, Georgia: Top Shelf Production 2013
121 pp.
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