March Book Three by John Lewis

"The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men."

In March, Book Three, John Lewis chronicles the efforts of Black Americans to obtain true equality, peace and brotherhood in their country.

His story continues with the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama on September 15, 1963. This church was a headquarters of the civil rights movement in Birmingham. Sunday September 15 was its annual "Youth Day" and hundreds of young people were attending. The bombing killed four young girls: Addie May Collins, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley and Denise McNair. Dr. King told those at the funeral that they needed to look at "the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderers."

Diane Nash had a plan to have thousands of young people to peacefully demonstrate Montgomery, the capital of Alabama, cutting off roads, trains, airports, the government and shutting down everything. The goals were to force segregationist Governor George Wallace out of office and obtain the right to vote for every adult in Alabama. Dr. King did not agree with this plan but Lewis and Nash felt that SNCC had to do something. They decided to target the city of Selma in Dallas County, where sixty-three protestors had been arrested. 

Lewis, who was chairman of SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) believed they needed to focus on "One Man, One Vote" because Blacks faced enormous odds attempting to register to vote. Protests in front of the Dallas County Courthouse saw many arrests, including John Lewis.

On October 7, 1963, SNCC mobilized dozens of people lined up outside in the hot sun to register to vote. Major Joe Smelley in charge of the state troopers and Jim Clarke, the mean and violent sheriff of Dallas County, refused to allow anyone to leave the line and return for bathroom and water breaks. Despite this, people stayed in line, while only twelve Blacks were allowed to register. 

Lewis became involved in the Freedom Vote, an event conceived and organized by Bob Moses, a Harvard graduate and Al Lowenstein, a white activist and former dean at Stanford University. Freedom Vote was a staged "mock election" with Black candidates, in which Black men and women could participate. The goal was to give them a sense of what it was like to participate in the electoral process.

Freedom Vote placed ballot boxes all across Mississippi, in churches, barber shops, grocery stores and beauty parlors. Then in November, 1963, John F. Kennedy Jr. was assassinated. Lewis and others wondered what it would mean for the civil rights movement, which Kennedy and his brother Robert had come to support.

Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as president; he was committed to passing a civil rights bill even though he had voted against racial equality in the past. But he wanted civil rights groups including SNCC to stop their protests. They did not.

In the final meeting of 1963, Lewis and the SNCC executive decided to work to obtain the right for all citizens of Mississippi to vote in the election year of 1964. At the convention of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Lewis and others reminded reporters that anyone interfering in any way "with the right of a Negro to vote in Mississippi commits a crime against the Federal government" per Title 18, Section 594 of the United States Code. 

They also announced that working with other civil rights groups, they planned to place one thousand summer workers in Mississippi, teaching in Freedom Schools and staffing community centers. These would register up to four hundred thousand Negroes on mock polling lists and would also do voter registration. Lewis told reporters they would challenge the right of white Mississippians to chose congressional representatives if none of the Black candidates were elected. They also intended to challenge the Democratic Convention in August over full recognition, the Federal Government on the illegal intimidation/arrests during voter registration. Freedom Summer was going to be about real votes. 

They also created the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) to challenge Mississippi's "segregation-based Democratic party" and its white-only delegation for their seats at the Democratic convention in Atlantic City, N.J. This would be done by following proper procedures at all levels.

In late June, three Freedom Summer volunteers went missing in Neshoba County.  They were Mickey Schwerner, Andy Goodman and James Chaney, a Black Mississippian. Their burned out station wagon was pulled from Bogue Chitto Creek without their bodies. The FBI and Navy were called in to search for them.  Meanwhile the violence continued throughout Mississippi with shootings and harassment of Blacks by whites. 

On July 2, 1964, the Civil Rights Act became law but Lewis and SNCC were determined to test if the law would be enforced. After the discovery of the bodies of the three missing Freedom Summer volunteers in August of 1964, Lewis and others became more determined than ever to see Black Americans register to vote.

The summer of 1964 proved to be a crucial one with the State Convention of the MFDP to elect delegates to send to Atlantic City, the Republican Convention in Daly City, CA which saw Barry Goldwater elected as the presidential nominee, and the events that rocked the Democratic Convention in Atlantic City, including the testimony of Fannie Lou Hamer.

In 1962, Fannie Lou Hamer lost her job, was arrested and beaten for trying to register to vote. She became a part of the SNCC in Mississippi after this. At the Democratic convention, Hamer recounted her attempt to register to vote, in front of of cameras from all the major networks, along with many others including Dr. King. Furious, President Johnson attempted to pre-empt her testimony but this backfired on him. Lewis also describes the struggles of the MFDP at the convention, his eye-opening trip to Africa with Harry Belafonte and his meeting with Malcom X in Kenya, internal struggles within the SNCC including gender equality as more women joined the civil rights movement, Dr. King's Nobel Peace Prize, and the assassination of Malcom X in New York. 

But the fruit of all of Lewis and other activists' unrelenting efforts to obtain the vote for Black Americans culminated in the marches in Alabama, from Selma to Montgomery in 1965. Those marches,  known as Bloody Sunday and Turnaround Tuesday, were met with violent opposition by  Mayor Jim Clark and police as well as George Wallace, governor of Alabama. The ensuing violence, broadcast on national networks, seared the conscience of the nation. The actions in Selma led to President Johnson signing into law the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which outlawed the many discriminatory practices occurring the mostly the southern states. The Voting Rights Act enforced the rights given in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Constitutional Amendment enacted almost one hundred years earlier, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. For John Lewis it was the end of one long journey and the beginning of yet another.

Discussion

March Book Three is the conclusion to John Lewis's outstanding graphic novel trilogy about his work in the civil rights movement.

In this final book, Lewis focuses on the determination of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and other groups to obtain true equality and participation in American society. They could only achieve this if if they had to right to vote, something that was guaranteed to Black men at least, in 1870. However, the southern states in particular, devised every method to deny this right to Black Americans. 

The Civil Rights Bill had given Black Americans the rights of citizens and Black men were allowed to vote. In fact, Black men not only voted but they ran for office, with twenty-two serving in Congress over a decade. The 15th Amendment banned the restriction of voting rights based on race, colour or having previously been a slave but it also allowed individual states to decide the qualifications for obtaining that privilege. White Americans still controlled policy in the south and they began to enact many different types of qualifications that restricted Blacks from being able to register to vote. Some jurisdictions required literacy tests, or poll taxes.

These restrictions allowed White Americans to effectively control voter registration and eliminate Black Americans from participating in the democratic process. With no say in government, it was impossible to move forward on equality. This would remain the case for almost one hundred years until the civil rights movement in the late 1950's and throughout the 1960's. In the end, the Voting Rights Act dramatically increased voter registration and voting turnout in elections among Black and minority communities.

Lewis is frank about the violence he and many others experienced at the hands of  politicians, law enforcement, armed forces and the general public. Peaceful protests were met with brutality and cruelty for black men, women and children, and for any who joined them including people of other races and faiths.  Graphic artist Nate Powell realistically portrays all of this, capturing the violence, some of which resulted in the murders of activists and Black citizens who were part of the protests. The panels showing the deaths of the missing Freedom volunteers and the march from Selma to Montgomery are especially well done. They capture the grief and sense of loss, the determination and courage Lewis and others experienced.

The struggle for equality and the right to vote is juxtaposed with the inauguration of Barack Obama, the first Black president and Lewis's attendance at the inauguration. It is meant to show how far America has come in the last fifty years when a Black American becoming president would have been unthinkable. Nevertheless, the struggle for true equality in America is an ongoing one.

The March trilogy should be required reading for all high school students in both the United States and Canada. To learn the lessons of acceptance, tolerance, equality and learning that all of us are brothers and sisters, we must study the past and learn from it. March allows us to do just that.

John Lewis passed away at the age of 80, in 2020. He was the last surviving member of the "Big Six" civil rights leaders that included Martin Luther King Jr. and James Farmer.

Book Details:

March Book Three by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell
Marietta, GA: Top Shelf Productions          2016

246 pp.