March: Book Two

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

“When my parents found out I’d been arrested and gone to jail, they were devastated. I was an embarrassment. A source of humiliation and gossip. So I stopped coming home as much. I still saw my family over the summer and on breaks here and there, but Nashville—and the growing Nashville Student Movement—became my home.”

This quotation demonstrates the individual aspect of the theme of The Power of Collective Action and Community Organizing. The Nashville Student Movement makes gains for integration in Nashville due to their organizing, but they also provide Lewis with a new, found family.

“It was a fumigator. Used only for killing pests. At first, I didn’t believe that man could’ve really left us there to die. Were we not human to him?”

In this passage, members of the Nashville Student Movement are locked in a fast-food place during their sit-in. The owner turns all the lights off and turns on a fumigator. One of the strategies of systemic racism is to dehumanize the people the system oppresses—Lewis notices this dehumanization in how they are sprayed with a solution meant to eliminate pests.

“We began holding ‘stand-ins’ at local segregated movie theatres. The tactic was borrowed from students at the University of Texas in Austin.”

This quotation highlights the theme of the power of collecting action and community organizing. Young people drive the movement forward and continue to innovate new tactics in the fight for civil rights. The NSM is in network with other communities of students to share the strategies that were effective for them on a local level.