March: Book Two

One of Lewis’s heroes through the March trilogy is Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. While Lewis largely portrays King as a hero, he also shows how tension builds between King and the body of the movement over The Diversity of Tactics Within the Civil Rights Movement. King acts as a go-between between the civil rights organizations and the United States government. While King sometimes preemptively represents the collective’s wishes, he also attempts to convince them to comply with Bobby Kennedy’s requests for compromise. 

Even though Farmer and Nash are firm in their opinion that the Freedom Rides should not stop, King argues, “it is not without merit to say that the Freedom Ride has already made its point, and should now be called off” (86). The accompanying illustration to this dialogue shows King with his hands up in a pleading posture, while figures like Nash are illustrated with skeptical expressions, like one raised eyebrow. Nash finds it outrageous to suggest that they cease an action that seems to be working. She thinks that the violence they experience means that their message is being received seriously.

Several pages later, SNCC members ask King to join the Freedom Rides, and he declines because he is on probation. A SNCC member retorts, “We’re all on probation, Dr. King” (90). Most Freedom Riders, like Lewis, have been jailed multiple times due to their activism, yet they still participate in the Rides. They see King’s explanation as an indication that he would rather participate from the sidelines—in press junkets, and in conversations with government officials, rather than in direct action. A quarter page illustration at the top of page 91 shows King cutting his eyes sideways at the SNCC members, with sweat beads pouring down his cheeks and forehead. While this is not an admission that the SNCC members are right, it at least shows that he understands their judgement and feels its pressure.

The illustrative technique in this span of pages contains a great variety of panel sizes and shapes, all of which are employed purposefully to highlight the narrative’s conflict and main themes. For instance, on page 76 through 78, there are five to six panels per page of all different sizes, delineated by crooked and diagonal gutters. These panels depict the segregationists and Klansmen violently assaulting the Riders and the federal agents deployed to protect them. The panels are filled with sound effects, like “SCREEEEE,” “KRUNP,” and “CRASH” (76), to portray the auditory din caused by the violence.

The next stretch of pages, from 79 through 82, intersperse sound from the 2009 timeline with the spectacle of violence in 1961. Starting on page 79, the lines of the patriotic song, “My Country ‘Tis of Thee,” written in 1831, weave like a banner through the page. On pages 80-81, there is a full-page spread of Aretha Franklin singing this song at Barack Obama’s First Inauguration. Within this page are six tiny panels portraying events from 1961: Riders bloodied and broken helping each other walk, white men smiling with bats and Confederate flags, bodies shoved under cars, and policemen casually smoking. 

On page 82 are the last lines of Aretha’s song, on a page that is fully blacked-out except for a white person’s arm throwing a Molotov cocktail at the side of the First Baptist Church, where the remaining Riders shelter. The juxtaposition of these scenes of violence with the patriotic song drive home a sobering message. The song asserts that the United States is the “sweet land of liberty” and states, “let freedom ring.” The interspersed panels from the 1960s demonstrate that the liberty and freedom the country espouses are not universal: Violence and oppression and prejudice also animate the country. The lines “land where my fathers died” is especially significant coming from Aretha, a Black woman, and they are arranged centrally over her head. As a Black American, Aretha’s “fathers” and ancestors sacrificed for the United States, likely unwillingly.

This is an example of meaningful parallelism: Moments between the past and future timeline are paralleled to create greater meaning than either could achieve on their own. Much of the parallelism in this graphic novel depicts moments happening in the 1960s and 2009, to show the continuity of struggle faced by marginalized people—in this case, Black Americans—throughout the nation’s history. However, when Lewis is imprisoned at Parchman Farm, parallelism is used to juxtapose the wrongfully imprisoned Freedom Riders to their wrongfully enslaved ancestors. 

Lewis calls Parchman Farm “21,000 acres of bullwhip-wielding guards and human bondage” (99). In the decades after the abolition of enslavement, the incarceration rate of Black men grew exponentially and disproportionately. The 13th Amendment says that enslavement is outlawed except as punishment for a crime: Thus, these men were convicted on minor offenses and sentenced for long terms. 

Lewis describes the systemic racism of the legal system: “[T]he prosecution only called one witness, and all 27 of us were convicted of disturbing the peace. We were sentenced to a $200 fine each, and a suspended sentence of 60 days in jail” (97). While the Freedom Riders consciously choose not to pay the fines for sentences they deem illegal, lower-income people might not be able to pay this fine. In June 1961, $200 is equivalent to over $2,000 in early 2025. Since lower-income people are disproportionately Black and Latinx due to the legacies of systemic racism, the demographics of people serving sentences is disproportionately people of color.

Parchman Farm is also infamous for engaging in “convict leasing,” a practice where the prison would lease prison labor to wealthy individuals and companies. Often, inmates—including children—were made to work in chain gangs hoeing fields and picking cotton for no money, little food, and inadequate shelter, essentially resulting in a form of legalized enslavement. 

While these working conditions parallel the circumstances at Parchman to the era of enslavement, the Freedom Riders explicitly invoke this parallelism by singing freedom songs, celebrating The Power of Collective Action and Community Organizing. The imprisoned Freedom Riders sing “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me ‘Round,” a freedom song adapted from a spiritual called “Don’t You Let Nobody Turn You Round.” Spirituals were songs about freedom sung by enslaved people; when similar songs or adaptations of existing songs emerged as civil rights anthems, they were called freedom songs. This freedom song contains lyrics like, “Ain’t gonna let no jail house, Lordy, turn me around. I’m gonna keep on walkin’, Lord, keep on talkin’, Lord, marchin’ up to freedom’s land” (104). These lyrics describe how punitive measures meant to dissuade, like imprisonment, aren’t going to turn them away from their path toward freedom and equity. 

The inclusion of the verb form of the word “march” is also significant, as this is both the name of the graphic novel and a constant refrain of Lewis’s. Coming shortly after Aretha’s song, this freedom song also shows how music becomes a motif depicting the resilience of Black Americans.