This is the Big One! Congressman John Lewis’s graphic novel/memoir trilogy concludes with March Book Three, which focuses on the events leading up to the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. And quite a lot of blood got spilled along the way.
After the awful firebombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama in August 1963 which left four young girls dead, the young Lewis, Chair of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), steps up efforts to allow African Americans to vote in the South. But brutal police treatment, attacks by racist groups like the Ku Klux Klan, and internal politics, almost undermine the movement. Eventually, after the historic “Bloody Sunday” March on March 7th, 1965 in Selma, Alabama (depicted as the most horrific experience ever, with nonviolent protestors mercilessly beaten by cops on Governor Wallace’s orders), President Johnson throws his total support behind the Voting Rights act.
Lewis’s account in March Book Three, vividly dramatized by writer Aydin & artist Powell, contains many powerful moments. There’s the 13-year-old shot to death by teenagers who had just left a Klan rally. The murders of three Civil Rights volunteers and the months-long search for their bodies. The brutality of law enforcement officials. And the less-than-perfect depictions of such known Civil Rights figures, including Johnson, Dr. King, Malcolm X, and Roy Wilkins, all of whom at one time pushed their own agendas. (Wilkins especially comes off bad here.)
Despite all the tragedies recounted, the March Trilogy stands as a powerful testament highlighting the heroic efforts of people like John Lewis who heroically persevered in the face of overwhelming and fatal odds to promote Civil Rights for all. Dr.King said it best in Montgomery Alabama, two weeks after Bloody Sunday: “No lie can live forever.” Not as long as people stand up to injustice.
If you want a good description of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, March Book Three is highly recommended.
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