“We’re gonna march.”
That was what John Lewis said as he stubbornly refused to dial back the demonstrations in which large numbers of Black people were getting seriously hurt and/or arrested.
This, the second part of the March trilogy, covers the years 1960 to 1963, culminating in the historic march on Washington.
Occasionally the story fast forwards to the inauguration of Barack Obama, the first Black president of the United States, in January of 2009.
This trilogy is told from the point of view of the late John Lewis, congressman and civil rights advocate.
He recalls how, in Nashville in 1960, “using nonviolent sit-ins, our young organization had successfully ended segregation at the lunch counters downtown. Next, we turned our attention to fast food restaurants and cafeterias, using the same strategy.”
Also in Nashville, 14 weeks of stand-ins resulted in movie theaters becoming desegregated.
However, that November “… what we found, as we pushed our protests deeper into the heart of segregated society, was that our nonviolent actions were met with increasingly more violent responses.”
Lewis then joined the Freedom Riders, people of color who would board buses that were segregated to test the strength of Boynton v. Virginia, a 1960 decision by the United States Supreme Court. The case overturned a judgment convicting Bruce Boynton, a Black law student, for trespassing by being in a restaurant in a bus terminal that was for whites only.
Those Black people arrested refused to pay bail or fines because they believed the money would go to places that perpetuate segregation.
This graphic novel shows, in brutal detail, how Freedom Riders were viciously attacked in Rock Hill, South Carolina by whites as police looked on.
As luck would have it, Lewis was meeting with American Friends Service Committee members (Quakers) when a bus he could have been on going to Birmingham was firebombed.
In January 1963, Alabama Governor George Wallace, made his infamous speech that ended in him declaring “segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”
In May of that year, the nation watched as Birmingham Commissioner of Public Safety Theophilus Eugene “Bull” Connor use fire hoses and dogs to attack demonstrators. Those images helped the civil rights protestors gain greater national attention.
As many as 250,000 people were in attendance at the march on Washington on August 28, 1963.
Performers at the march included Mahalia Jackson, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, and Peter, Paul, and Mary.
When Lewis spoke to the crowd, he said that, while he supported President Kennedy’s proposed civil rights bill, he did so “with great reservations.”
Lewis said he believed the bill, even if it became law, would not do enough to help most Black Americans.
“To those who have said ‘be patient and wait ‘we have long said that we cannot be patient, we do not want our freedom gradually but we want to be free now!” Lewis said. “By the force of our demands, our determination, and our numbers we shall splinter the segregated south into a thousand pieces and put them together in the image of God and democracy. We must say wake up, America! Wake up!”
Later, Dr. Martin Luther King would give his famous “I have a dream” speech.
“In those moments, Dr. King made plain all of our hopes, our aspirations…,” Lewis recalled. “Everything we sought through the beatings and the blood, through the triumphs and failures, everything we dared to imagine about a new America, a better America.”
Lewis was joined by Andrew Aydin, who co-wrote the graphic novel, and Nate Powell, who illustrated it.
What they have achieved is to bring American history to generations too young to have seen the civil rights movement in action.
What it also does is act as a barometer, a litmus test, to see just how far we’ve come when it comes to race relations. Considering how often we see racist attacks in the news, it might seem we haven’t come far from society 60 years ago.
And, thanks to ubiquitous cameras, we see brutal attacks as a matter of course on the nightly news. But, how many race-based beatings do we not see?
For every George Floyd, how many Black people are brutalized at the hands of the authorities when there are no cameras?
This trilogy is important in part because it guides us through an important era in the United States and in part because it highlights how real change can be achieved using nonviolence in the face of visceral hatred.
Find my review of “March: Book One” here:
https://www.j1studios.com/march-book-one-review/
Find my review of “March: Book Three” here:
https://www.j1studios.com/march-book-three-review/
and find the trilogy here:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/march-trilogy-john-lewis/1129836798?ean=9781603093958
