March: Book One

March: Book One (2013) by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell is the first in the graphic memoir trilogy detailing the life of political activist and US Congressman John Lewis. Winner of the Coretta Scott King Award, March explores Lewis’s early childhood through his young adulthood. Lewis was a key figure in the civil rights movement, and his journey toward advocacy is paved with education and peaceful resistance. The words of Lewis and Aydin come to life in Powell’s illustrations in this graphic representation. The book details Lewis’s early experiences on his sharecropper father’s farm through his college years as he advocated for Black rights in the United States. Lewis knew from a young age he wanted to do more, and he devoted himself to learning and reading as much as he could. Lewis’s endurance in the face of adversity and his commitment to fighting injustice through nonviolent action established his legacy in the civil rights movement. For discussion of the other books in the March trilogy, see the SuperSummary Study Guide March: Books 2 & 3.

Content Warning: This memoir contains racial slurs and epithets. This study guide obscures the author’s use of the n-word in its quotations.

Summary

This graphic memoir tells the story of John Lewis from early childhood to his college years. The Prologue opens on Edmund Pettus Bridge, where Lewis and other protestors face terrible violence from local law enforcement. This opening serves as a testament for where the March trilogy is headed. The first chapter begins on the day of the 2009 presidential inauguration of Barack Obama, America’s first Black president. As Lewis prepares to leave his office for the inauguration, he encounters a woman with two small sons. Lewis shares his story with the two small boys and offers them details from his childhood and his early memories of the civil rights movement.

As a young boy, Lewis took care of the chickens on his sharecropper father’s farm in Alabama. It was here Lewis first exhibited his need to care for others and to fight for love and justice. When one of his chickens died, Lewis tenderly performed a funeral and challenged his family’s need to eat the animal. The chickens were in his care, and Lewis fought tirelessly for them. This compulsion to love and stand up for others and to feel the weight of responsibility carried Lewis throughout his life.

As a young boy, Lewis stood apart. He was serious and studious. Those around him teased him for his maturity and spiritual fervor. Lewis was greatly influenced by his education and religious beliefs and often preached to his chickens. He spent his time reading as much as he could and absorbing lessons from the Bible. His uncle, recognizing potential in the young boy, took Lewis on a trip to Buffalo, New York, so he could experience more of the country. On this trip, Lewis was astounded to see how Black people in the North lived in comparison to the South.

When Lewis heard Martin Luther King Jr. speak for the first time on the radio, he felt a fire light inside him. Lewis felt called to fight for equality and to combat the injustices he saw around him. At a time when Alabama was highly segregated, Lewis witnessed how he and his Black peers were not offered equal education or opportunities. He saw the economic and educational hardship created by a system that was never intended to be fair in the first place. Like King, Lewis felt a spiritual tug toward advocacy.

While attending the American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville, Lewis encountered others who also wanted to fight for change, such as Diane Nash and Jim Lawson. Together they formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Lawson educated SNCC members in how to use nonviolent action to achieve change. Lewis and his fellow members practiced facing violence and harassment while emphasizing humanity and love and never matching hate with hate.

SNCC decided to tackle department store lunch counters first. Black customers could shop and spend money at department stores, but they could not sit at the lunch counters to eat their meals. The group organized several sit-ins at lunch counters and combatted hatred and harassment with peaceful action each time. Their actions sparked sit-ins across the country. These protests eventually culminated in the group’s arrest, and there too the group found an opportunity to shed light on injustice.