March: Book One

Great graphic novel. John Lewis gives a fascinating account of his involvement with the Civil Rights movement. The black and white illustrations are also well done. Thank you Representative Lewis for writing this.

Read it for my school library book club, learned about John Lewis through this book. I truly am glad, I had to read his story, it is very inspiring and helped further my education on the civil rights movement. Even more so than I knew at the time, glad I read this when I did.

Beautifully done graphic novel about the Civil Rights movement. I look forward to reading the other 2 in the series.

What a phenomenal story of John Lewis' life during the Civil Rights Movement. I absolutely love that this beginning is written as he is telling his story to two young African American boys. He gets interrupted a few times but the flashbacks and then back to present day is so awesome. And for him to be telling his story on the day of Obama's inauguration was a phenomenal idea. I learned so much from this book that I truly didn't know. As kids we learn about sit-ins and the marches but we don't really learn all of the behind-the-scenes aspects that even made it happen. There were so many people involved and so much occurred before the infamous events that we are taught in at school. We learn about the sit-ins in restaurants but we are rarely taught that it happened in a number of places all over the US. And their belief in nonviolent protests and how strong they were to stick to that even as others were beating them and harassing them. The strength that started the movement was monumental and I think books like this should be more required reading in schools today. We should be taught the whole story!

And the phenomenal story continues. I am so glad that John Lewis put all of this information about the real journey through the Civil Rights Movement. Once again, there are so many details in this book that we are never taught in school. We are taught that it was almost this seamless, easy journey from sit-ins and freedom rides to desegregation. But that journey was FAR from easy! There were so many other pieces of the puzzle that had to come together for anything to happen. And once again, this story being juxtaposed with Obamas inauguration was beautiful! This book starts in September of 1963 and we see much more violence and brutality from sheriffs and policeman. During marches and sit-ins, African Americans practiced nonviolence and peaceful protests but that is not at all how they were treated in return. I can understand why we probably don't teach this in schools but with so much violence already happening in our world, maybe this would be good for more to know about. This book starts by focusing on the efforts to register more African American voters. It is appalling how different they were treated, given huge tests and ridiculous questions to take part in something that should have been an automatic right. It is truly amazing however to see the lengths that they went to in order to register to vote. This book also showed the effect that JFK's assassination had on African Americans and their efforts to integrate and get the right to vote.
This book also showed that even with certain things put into place like the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it didn't solve all of the problems. With this act, it didn't ban literacy tests and other voting restrictions so African Americans had to continue to fight for their right to vote. It didn't stop the violence against African Americans - there were still church bombings, shootings, beatings, and thousands of arrests. This book also details Malcolm X's assassination and the march from Selma to Montgomery. Once again, there are so many details that many people don't know enough about and this series is one way to educate. I personally think that this series should be required reading especially with everything going on in the world today. Highly recommend!!