Trish's Reviews > March: Book One

The third book in the graphic novel series March won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature in 2016, prompting me to have a look at the series. Book 1 depicts John Lewis’ childhood in rural Alabama, where he grew up on a farm. His personality was revealed early, and his relatives took to calling him “preacher.” He cared more about words and concepts than the back-breaking reality of labor in the fields. He liked to wear a tie and read books any day and escaped to school even when he was needed in the fields at home. The "boy preacher" gave his his first sermon five days before his sixteenth birthday, inspired by Rosa Parks' protest in Montgomery, Alabama, fifty miles away.

First frames for this series open in Washington, D.C. in January 2009 and Lewis’ history is told in flashbacks. Black and white drawings of Representative Lewis’ office in Cannon House Office Building are interspersed with visions of his childhood. It is more than fifty years between the two periods and yet they are connected in some way we know will be made clear. Our perception of those fifty years changes like a hologram as we read, sometimes thinking fifty years sounds like a long time, and then realizing it’s only fifty years, and yet how radically different living conditions were then, outside of cities. Blacks were still being blatantly discriminated against in every way, and the first civil rights legislation was just being proposed, passed, and enacted.

This book follows Lewis from his early schooldays, through high school and his first discovery of the “social gospel” being taught by Martin Luther King, Jr. Lewis knew after hearing King one day on the radio that the gospel King was spreading was something he believed in whole-heartedly. And he gravitated to places where that message was being taught, ending up in Nashville, Tennessee with a group of like-minded activists. The first book ends with a series of sit-ins in Nashville cafes and restaurants, forcing them eventually to serve black customers along with whites.

The authors simplify the twists and turns in Lewis’ life, but hover carefully over turning points, and moments of decision. This biography is aimed at young adults, not children. But even young adults may need someone to explain how and why there was so much opposition to integration, unless they have already seen and felt those sentiments in their lives. I expect black youth will know exactly what Lewis is telling them, and white youth will be aghast, even disbelieving, unless they, too, live in the south. But these books are absolutely necessary at this time, to refresh our collective memories. It is not so long ago that all of us can’t get first hand corroboration of Lewis’ history, and remind ourselves those attitudes were not appropriate then, and they aren’t appropriate now.

The encapsulation of a real life in a series of picture frames and dialog boxes is a difficult thing to pull off, but Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell do it beautifully, never talking down to the reader, nor reaching so high that the concepts can’t be grasped immediately, viscerally even. This is life and death stuff, and they leave a little of the horror in for us to contemplate, but the steady focus and preparation necessary to challenge political power comes across as well. As does the bravery of those who dared to resist.

Highly recommended for a basic understanding of what the fight for civil rights looked like from an individual's perspective in the south of the United States in the 1950s and early 1960s. Conditions experienced by blacks, attitudes of whites, the time period, the first resistance groups, and key figures are introduced. More material and discussion will be needed to answer the questions students and readers will surely have when confronted with this information for the first time.