March: Book Two

“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.

“I know that an education is important and I hope to get one, but human dignity is the most important thing in my life. This is the most important decision in my life—to decide to give up all if necessary for the Freedom Ride, that justice and freedom might come to the Deep South.”

Lewis writes these words in his application to join the Freedom Rides. This quotation characterizes Lewis and his priorities. While in Congress later in his life, Lewis was given the moniker “the conscience of Congress.” This quotation shows his moral and ethical framework, and his willingness to sacrifice for the greater good, even early in his life.

“Eugene ‘Bull’ Connor—he was Birmingham’s Chief of Police. Everyone was afraid of him—even the governor […] We found out later that he’d promised the Ku Klux Klan fifteen minutes with the bus before he’d make any arrests.”

This quotation introduces Bull Connor, the primary antagonistic figure in this installment of Lewis’s graphic memoir. Connor was a white supremacist and segregationist who used his position of power to uphold his beliefs and prejudices at a systemic level, as seen through his intimidation of the mayor and his collaboration with the KKK.

“Dr. Bergman, still bloody from the first bus’s attack in Anniston, was brutally beaten again on the terminal floor in Birmingham. He sustained permanent brain damage and a stroke that would paralyze him for the rest of his life.”

Dr. Walter Bergman is a white man who joined the CORE with his wife Frances. He was the oldest Freedom Rider who was part of the original 13. Bergman survived the firebombing of the bus in Anniston. In Birmingham, he and Jim Peck intervened in the beating of a young Black Freedom Rider, Charles Person, by attacking Klansmen. This quotation shows the depth of violence exhibited by the mob: The mob kicked the elderly Dr. Bergman, who abided by the principles of nonviolence. After this beating and the stroke it caused, he had to relearn how to speak, write, and feed himself, though he never regained the ability to walk. This quotation also shows the determination of the Riders to advance their cause, despite great physical threat to themselves.

“‘I’ll have a car on its way to you. Eleven other “packages” have been shipped down to Birmingham…John, where do I send the rest of the packages?’

‘Send them to Birmingham, too. Send them all to Birmingham.’”

This is a conversation between Diane Nash and John Lewis. Diane is using the metaphor of “packages” as a code for the buses full of Freedom Riders. After Bull Connor wouldn’t let them pass through Birmingham, part of their plan became to send as many Riders as possible to the area. One of the aspects of the power of collective action and community organizing is that they have a well of people to draw from for actions like this.

“It may sound strange, but at the time I was more shocked that this white bus driver knew enough about us to reference CORE by name. People were starting to notice us, even if we didn’t change their minds.”

Lewis overhears a white bus driver, who refuses to drive the Freedom Riders south from Birmingham, reference the CORE. It is not the fact that the man is illegally refusing to uphold the ruling in Boynton v. Virginia that shocks Lewis, but rather the fact that he knows what the CORE is. This relates to the theme of The Nature of Media and Public Perception: The media coverage of the civil rights struggle is raising the CORE’s profile, which ultimately benefits their cause even though not everyone sympathizes.

“C’mon…harder, Danny! That’s my boy…git him! Them eyes….git them eyes!”

This is an example of the type of rhetoric uttered by the Klansmen and white mobs who assault the Freedom Riders on their way south. Their assaulters urge each other on to greater violence, targeting vulnerable areas that might experience lasting damage should they be injured, like eyes.

“Please tell the Attorney General we’ve been cooling off for 350 years—if we cool off any more, we will be in a deep freeze. The Freedom Ride will go on.”

These words are uttered by James Farmer, and they show The Diversity of Tactics Within the Civil Rights Movement. Bobby Kennedy wants the CORE to call off the Freedom Rides, and Dr. King tries to persuade Nash, Farmer, and Lewis that Kennedy might be right. The trio flatly refuse, unwilling to capitulate to white supremacist violence. Three hundred fifty years prior to 1961 is roughly 1611, corresponding to the early years of the American Colonies’ enslavement of African peoples.

“I think I should choose the time and place of my Golgotha.”

These words uttered by Dr. King characterize and complexify his character. He says them after he uses his parole as a reason not to join the Rides himself—many people are skeptical of this reason and see it as an excuse. In general, Dr. King is less focused on direct action than a figure like Lewis or Nash, showing the diversity of tactics within the civil rights movement. The metaphor King uses could be variously interpreted. Golgotha is the site where Jesus was crucified, according to the Christian gospels. On the one hand, King might be aware that his participation in activist causes could lead to his death; indeed, he was assassinated in 1968. The SNCC members who ask King to join them seem to interpret this as King presenting himself as a Christ-like figure in the movement. As they walk away on page 91, they call him “De Lawd” sarcastically.

“Mr. Attorney General, it’s a matter of conscience and morality—they must use their lives and bodies to right a wrong. Our conscience tells us that the law is wrong and we must resist—but we have a moral obligation to accept the penalty.”

Dr. King speaks to Bobby Kennedy on the phone after Kennedy found out that none of the Freedom Riders arrested in Mississippi are willing to post bail. Though many Freedom Riders seem skeptical of King’s decision to stay on the sidelines of the action, here he stands up for the Riders’ cause to Kennedy, explaining why they aren’t willing to compromise. This quotation also demonstrates the Christian ethos King took toward his nonviolent stance: He admits that the Riders must use their bodies to resist, but he also appeals to the “morality” of accepting legal penalties.

“Mississippi State Penitentiary, AKA ‘Parchman Farm’—June 15, 1961. Parchman was the stuff of legends—dark legends. 21,000 acres of bullwhip-wielding guards and human bondage.”

The 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution states that enslavement and involuntary servitude must be outlawed, “except as a punishment for crime.” David Oshinsky, a historian of Parchman Farm and other Mississippi prisons, writes in his book Worse Than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice (1997) about how elite Southerners who supported segregation exploited this loophole by convicting Black men of minor or falsified crimes, sentencing them to use their prison labor. This is the exact phenomenon that Lewis describes here when he uses the imagery of “bullwhip-wielding guards” and “human bondage.”

“Hey! In the van—what you actin’ like that for?! Ain’t no newspapermen out here.”

These words are uttered by the prison staff at Parchman Farm. This quotation shows that the guards are aware of how the Freedom Riders use the nature of media and public perception: Documentation of the brutality they face, and their nonviolent response raises their profile and encourages public sympathy. The idea that there is no media to capture any brutality visited upon them at Parchman Farm is used as a threat.

“The fare was paid in blood, but the Freedom Rides stirred the national consciousness and awoke the hearts and minds of a generation […] We were becoming a national movement.”

Lewis meditates on the cost and payoff of the Freedom Rides. This quotation addresses both the themes of the power of collective action and community organizing and the nature of media and public perception. The Rides were only possible because of the organizing actions of collectives, while sympathy and support were garnered due to news coverage of the Rides. These aspects work in concert to make the Rides effective despite the cost.

“In June of 1961, Robert Kennedy suggested to Diane Nash and others that it would be a better decision for us, in the long run, to focus on registering Black voters. I believed our direct action campaigns were working, and many within the movement were upset at the mere suggestion. But by the end of 1961, Dr. King gave the idea his full endorsement.”

The different approaches advocated by Bobby Kennedy, Diane Nash, and Dr. King demonstrate the diversity of tactics within the civil rights movement. Bobby Kennedy and Dr. King are positioned as favoring more indirect methods to effect change, while Nash and John Lewis support direct action. This quotation also demonstrates how Dr. King sometimes took positions that ran counter to the desires of “many in the movement.”

“Everyone knew I stood with Jim when it came to nonviolence, but the fact that I’d been arrested and beaten and jailed so many times held a lot of weight with my SNCC colleagues, old and new. So at the same time as Jim Lawson was shunned, I was elected to SNCC’s executive coordinating committee.”

This quotation explores how Lewis holds an interstitial place within the landscape of people who demonstrate the diversity of tactics within the civil rights movement. Lewis has put his body on the line and proven himself to the cause, earning the respect of activists on all sides of the issues.

“Today I have stood where once Jefferson Davis stood, and took an oath to my people. It is very appropriate then, that from this cradle of the Confederacy, the very heart of the great Anglo-Saxon Southland, that today we sound the drum for freedom, as have our generations of forebearers before us done, time and time again throughout history.”

These lines are uttered by George Wallace, a white man elected Governor of Alabama in 1963. Wallace romanticizes Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, which is commonly associated with segregation and racism. He also uses the term “Anglo-Saxon.” This term appeals to the erroneous mythological concept of an all-white Middle Ages and is commonly considered a racist dog whistle.

“Among the SNCC members, there wasn’t much interest in the March or President Kennedy’s bill. Many thought the march could be a lame event staged by conservative Black leaders that was probably, in some way, controlled by the federal government.”

This quotation describes the skepticism that is forming between organizations as a result of the ways they want to approach their civil rights actions. The SNCC is skeptical of Kennedy’s bill because it includes a clause that says people must have a sixth-grade education to vote. Members consider this to be similar to literacy requirements that were commonly used to prevent Black people from voting. More conservative organizations are more inclined to accept what the SNCC considers imperfect or half-measures.

“I knew Malcolm. I respected him. I shared his belief that our struggle was not simply in the courts, but in the streets. Still, I never felt like he was a part of the movement. Our movement was about creating an open, integrated society. And, violence, no matter how justified, was not something I could accept.”

Lewis dedicates one page in his graphic novel to discussing Malcolm X, despite his prevalence in the fight for civil rights. This quotation shows the divide that Lewis imagines between himself and Malcolm X. Malcolm X advocated for the idea that Black people should be able to defend themselves from white rule and racist violence. The nonviolence followed by Lewis doesn’t allow for self-defense.

“Up until then, many in the movement—including myself—had been critical of his response to our pleas for federal intervention.

‘You, the young people of SNCC, have educated me. You have changed me. Now I understand.’

It showed me something about Robert Kennedy that I came to respect: even though he could be a little rough—ruthless, some would say—he was willing to learn, to grow, and to change.”

This quotation characterizes the change in Bobby Kennedy’s character. Early in the graphic novel, Kennedy wants the Freedom Riders to stop their rides. Though he identifies as an ally and tries to help and defend them, he ultimately wants them to concede to the violent threats against them. By the end of the novel, Kennedy overtly expresses to Lewis how watching the SNCC and seeing their philosophical principles put into action in person has changed his understanding of the movement.

“I simply could not say no to Mr. Randolph. In the end, my speech no longer called the President’s bill ‘too little, too late,’ nor called for a ‘march through the Heart of Dixie, the way Sherman did.’ It no longer asked, ‘which side is the government on?’, nor described some political leaders as ‘cheap.’”

Lewis describes the phrases in his speech that were censored in the version he gave for the March on Washington. Older leaders convinced him to tone down his language and not say anything they considered controversial, or like something that they thought would estrange the listeners.

“Out of everyone who spoke at the March, I’m the only one still around.”

The speakers for the March, in order, were A. Philip Randolph, Daisy Bates, Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, John Lewis, Walter Reuther, Floyd McKissick, Rabbi Uri Miller, Whitney Young, Mathew Ahmann, Roy Wilkins, Rabbi Joachim Prinz, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Of this group, Whitney Young, Walter Ruether, and Dr. King died young, by drowning, airplane crash, and assassination respectively. Besides Lewis, Mathew Ahmann lived the longest; he died in 2001 from cancer at the age of 70. From then until his death in 2020, Lewis was the only surviving speaker from the March.

“But what political leader can stand up and say, ‘My party is the party of principles’? For the party of Kennedy is also the party of Eastland. The party of Javits is also the party of Goldwater. Where is our party? Where is the political party that will make it unnecessary to march on Washington?”

This is a selection from Lewis’s speech that he gave onstage at the March on Washington. While some of Lewis’s language that expressed criticism was altered or removed, sections like this remained. The Kennedy brothers were Democrats who supported civil rights. Jacob Javits was a Republican who staunchly supported civil rights, while Barry Goldwater was a conservative Republican who opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Lewis points out that there is no single existing party dedicated to supporting Black citizens.