Hi! Welcome to my blog where I will be reviewing books selected from the American Library Association’s weekly planner for July 2023-December 2024. The book of January 21-27 is March, a graphic novel, by Andrew Aydin and the third one in the series. The graphic novel discusses the civil rights movement especially the one led by John Lewis.
***SPOILERS AHEAD***
The novel recounts how residents of Selma, Alabama tried to fight back against the racist police force there. It was the first time anyone had threatened Jim Clark, the sheriff of Dallas County. John Lewis joined the fight in Selma with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and advocated for the right to vote for every person of color.
Lewis joined the fight with Selma College and the whole protest was charged with “unlawful assembly” and then taken to prison for weeks. The process was entitled “The Freedom Vote”, ensuring systematically discriminated against Black Americans had the right to vote and became a member of the electoral process.
In the end, over 90,000 Black citizens who were previously excluded from federal, local and state elections, all registered to vote and participated in the next federal election.
Panel from the novel, source
A key woman who became a leader in this Civil Rights movement was Fannie Lou Hamer. She attempted to register to vote after hearing a speech from James Bevel in 1962. This act of civic engagement caused her to be beaten, arrested and even fired from her job. These violent acts did not stop her in anyway and instead led her to become an activist for the Mississippi Movement.
The Mississippi Movement was created in the early to middle 1960s. It was a movement to spread voting rights for Black Americans from Alabama to Mississippi and throughout the whole South. Hamer gave a speech entitled “I Question America” to really emphasize her concerns and the struggles of a Black person being discriminated against and under represented during this time period.
John Lewis was in Detroit for a sit-in convention when he found out President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. He changed his speech for the evening and spoke out a eulogy for the United State’s, a nation who had just lost its president and was grieving over him and the future of the country.
Congressman John Lewis, source
As the novel moves along, it continues to focus on chronologies of the civil rights movement in the South, focused on John Lewis and his impact.
Overall, I would recommend this graphic novel to anyone who’s interested in learning more about the Civil Rights Movement, especially involving the right to vote and John Lewis’ impact. Even though this was in the form of a graphic novel, it was still a very serious subject. I enjoyed how this made learning the specific details and history surrounding John Lewis much more interesting and engaging. I would give this graphic novel an 8 out of 10 review.