By Westley Ashley
My knowledge of social change in America (in particular, the Civil Rights Movement) was personalized at a young age by my mother and grandmother. My mother helped integrate a school in small town Arkansas and her mother served as a social worker of sorts for a five county area in southwest Arkansas. Either through my mother thwarting my attempts at avoiding school with her “in my day” rebuttals or through stories told during daily crappie- fishing excursions with my grandmother, I learned important lessons about American history through oral history. As I age, events like realizing kids born in 1992 can now legally purchase alcohol or realizing many of my peers have never heard of Heathcliff and the Catillac Cats stop me in my tracks. But when I realized how many Americans don’t have a close connection to the Civil Rights Movement, I was honestly shocked at my own cluelessness. It just never dawned on me that many of today’s young adults have parents that were too young to recall Jim Crow’s death rattle. In other words, I foolishly thought everyone’s oral history included a discussion of the Civil Rights Movement.
A recent addition to the world of graphic novels, March: Book One could go a long way toward connecting young Americans to events and issues of the Civil Rights Movement. This skillfully crafted graphic novel can also help individuals of all ages understand why others appear unable to shake off the injuries acquired during this dynamic period of social change. March is billed as a vibrant first-hand account of John Lewis’ lifelong struggle for civil and human rights in America. Book One is set on Inauguration Day 2009 but frequently employs flashbacks to inform the reader of young John Lewis’ life in the Jim Crow South. These flashbacks appear crucial to the graphic novel’s contemplation on how far we have come, yet how far we still must go. Book One spans Congressman Lewis’ youth in rural Alabama, his life-changing meeting with Martin Luther King, Jr., and the battle to end segregation through nonviolent lunch counter sit-ins.
As Congressman Lewis explains, March is patterned after a comic book he read in the 1950s that inspired him and many other activists at the time to join the movement and use the principles of nonviolence to battle racial discrimination. In an article based on Mr. Aydin’s Georgetown thesis The Comic Book that Changed the World, Aydin investigates the power of one comic book to encourage social change. Aydin found, despite the downturn in popularity of comic books, the art form succeeded in promoting the story of the Montgomery movement’s effective nonviolent protests to masses of subjugated Black Americans. The power of the medium did not stop with the American Civil Rights Movement. Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story, the comic book that inspired Congressman Lewis’ March project, found its way to South Africans resisting the apartheid regime and was rediscovered and translated into Arabic and Farsi less than a decade ago.
The power of the medium is unquestionable. Nonetheless, for some, it raises the question “Why now? What could Congressman Lewis’ autobiography in graphic novel form do for social change some six decades following the start of the Civil Rights Movement?” Unlike the time period in which Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story was originally published, American literacy rates are generally higher than they were in the 1950s. More importantly, graphic novels are quite popular today. Take for example the success of The Walking Dead, Persepolis, and Watchmen. The potential for March to exceed the reach of Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story exists because of the current popularity of the graphic novel form. Additionally, the potential for March to inspire Americans to push for progress goes beyond the Civil Rights Movement. Just as Congressman Lewis put his life on the line in the pursuit of human and civil rights, there is always a need for others to fully commit to pursuing meaningful social change. With the current boom of the graphic