March: Book Two

Content Warning: This section of the guide feature depictions of racism and graphic violence.

March: Book One is the first installment in John Lewis and Andrew Aydin’s graphic memoir trilogy, illustrated by Nate Powell. It takes place in two main timelines. Like in March: Book Two, the frame narrative in January 2009 takes place on the day of the inauguration of the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama. As John Lewis, then a member of Congress, prepares for the inauguration in his office, a Black mother enters with her two children, wanting to show them Congressman Lewis’s office so they can learn about his role in Black history in the civil rights era. Lewis begins telling the boys and mother stories about his childhood as the son of a sharecropper in Alabama: These stories compose the memoir’s second main timeline.

Lewis begins his recollections by talking about the close, compassionate relationship he developed with his family’s chickens, whom he often preached to as his interest in preaching grew. A trip north with his uncle draws the young Lewis’s attention to the inequities Black people face in the South.