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.

March Book 2 by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell

 "By the force of our demands, our determination and our numbers, we shall splinter the segregated South into a thousand pieces and put them back together in the image of God and democracy."

                                                                                                                John Lewis, 1963

In March Book Two, John Lewis continues the story of  he and his fellow Black Americans efforts to fight segregation and gain basic civil and human rights for all. Their story is set against the backdrop of Barack Obama's inauguration ceremony in 2009. 

As he became more involved in the civil rights movement, John's parents were humiliated at his prior arrest, so he stopped visiting so often. John F. Kennedy had defeated Richard Nixon and won the November 1960 election and the NSC began a new campaign. In 1960, when non-violent sit-ins successfully ended segregation in lunch counters in Nashville, TN,, the Nashville Student Movement (NSC) turned their attention to fast food restaurants and cafeterias. However, when they attempted to order from restaurants, they were met with violent resistance.

In February, 1961, they began action to desegregate movie theatres by repeatedly attempting to buy tickets. Ironically, Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments was playing. This action was also met with violent opposition. Rev. Will Campbell and those on the central committee questioned putting young people in harm's way, but John was determined the protests would continue. They were arrested the next evening and John spent his twenty-first birthday in jail.

The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) wanted to test the Supreme Court Decision, Boyton v. Virginia, which outlawed segregation and racial discrimination on buses and in bus terminals. They decided to do this by having Freedom Ride 1961 with a small group of integrated students riding buses into Birmingham, Alabama. 

In April, 1961, John met his fellow freedom riders, Jim Peck, Elton Cox, Dr. Walter and Frances Berman, Jimmy McDonald, Charles Person, Ed Blankenheim, Genevieve Hughes, Albert Bigelow, Hank Thomas and their leader James Farmer. They all signed wills and then split into two groups. They also mailed their civil disobedience plans to President Kennedy, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, FBI Director J.Edgar Hoover and others.

 

In Rockhill, South Carolina, the group met with trouble and were attacked while police stood by and watched. John left the group after being offered an interview in Philadelphia for a volunteer program through the Quakers, in India. He planned to rejoin the Freedom Riders in Birmingham. However, his group never made it there - their bus was firebombed and the riders beaten with pipes and fists. The second bus made it to Birmingham but was also attacked. Eugene "Bull" Connor, Birmingham's Police Chief did nothing, promising the KKK they could have fifteen minutes with the riders. Dr. Bergman, still recovering from the beating in Anniston was so badly beaten in the Birmingham bus terminal, he sustained brain damage, had a stroke and was permanently paralyzed.

Determined to continue, ten riders including John Lewis set out from Nashville to Birmingham where they were met by an angry mob of white citizens. They were held on the bus for three hours and then arrested and put in jail, supposedly for their own protection. Connor arranged to take them back to Nashville, but he dropped them at the Tennessee state line, in the depths of Klan country. It was a frightening experience for John and the others. But it was to set the tone for the many sacrifices he and many others would make in order to enforce the Supreme Court ruling, to begin to rid the country of segregation and create an equal society for Black Americans.

Discussion

March Book Two takes readers from the Freedom Rides of 1961 to the March on Washington in August, 1963. In this second book of his graphic memoir, John Lewis highlights the repeated violence he and other members of the various groups fighting for equality experienced. It's difficult to comprehend the level of hatred towards Black Americans that existed in the southern United States in the 20th century, so a graphic novel seems one of the best formats to truly highlight what happened.

Lewis describes the firebombing of the Freedom Rider's buses, the physical beatings many, if not all the Freedom Riders experienced, the terror of being caught deep in Klan territory, and the attack on First Baptist Church in Montgomery, AL in which white supremacists surrounded the church and the National Guard had to be brought in.

March Book Two highlights some of the key events in the blossoming civil rights movement including the jailing of the Freedom Riders in the Mississippi State Penitentiary after they refused to pay a fine, the development of the movement into two branches, one devoted to activism, the other to registering black voters. Lewis also describes the many actions and demonstrations by the civil rights movement and those devoted to segregation: the protest against segregated swimming pools at Cairo, Illinois, the demonstration accompanying James Meredith when he became the first African-American to enroll at the University of Mississippi, the swearing in of Alabama Governor George Corley Wallace Jr., a devoted segregationist and racist in 1963, the arrest and incarceration of Martin Luther King Jr during the march on Birmingham, AL, the march of African-American children to protest segregation and their brutal treatment by Birmingham police, and the events leading up to the historic march in Washington, D.C. on August 28, 1963.

 

In his graphic memoir, Lewis doesn't shy away from portraying the violence and hatred he and most civil rights advocates encountered in the 1960's. Black Americans were beaten, harassed and murdered, often with no consequences to those perpetrating the violence. Politicians such as George Wallace, a vocal racist who believed in segregation, and who supported Jim Crow laws, were determined to prevent African Americans from obtaining any sort of equality. Many southern states refused to accept the Supreme Court decision, Boynton v. Virginia in 1960, which held that racial segregation in public transportation spaces was illegal because it violated the Interstate Commerce Act. It took the actions of the Freedom Riders, which were violently opposed, and ultimately the actions of the Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy in response to the violence, to enforce that court decision. For Lewis and others, it quickly became apparent that each step to desegregate American society was going to be difficult and require determined, forceful action. They knew they were risking their lives to create a better future for themselves and their children.

In that regard, Lewis's memoir captures the determination, courage and sacrifice civil rights activists and many others, made in the fight for civil rights. Set against their struggles in 1960, are panels that portray the swearing in of Barack Obama - the first Black American president - in 2009. It was an America George Wallace and Ross Barrett could hardly have imagined.  Lewis continues his story in March Book Three.

The back matter contains the text of John Lewis's speech to the Washington March as well as author biographies.

Book Details:

March Book Two by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell
Marietta, GA: Top Shelf Productions     2015
182 pp.

March by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell

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.