March: Book One

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was a landmark Supreme Court decision in 1954. The judges in this case unanimously agreed that “separate but equal” was not constitutional and that schools could no longer segregate based on skin color. Lewis describes hearing about this case on the radio and his excitement that he would soon be able to attend the local white school only to discover the case did not change his current situation or educational experiences.

Martin Luther King Jr. and the Montgomery Story is a 15-page comic book published in 1957. This book describes the history surrounding King as well as Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott. The book details the components of nonviolent protest and provides instruction for passive resistance. This book was influential to author Andrew Aydin, who wrote his master’s thesis on the comic book. March: Book One references this book as it introduces Jim Lawson, a representative of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, which published the Martin Luther King Jr. and the Montgomery Story. Lawson taught Lewis about the discipline of non-violence, which Lewis and his peers used for the lunch counter sit-in protests.

The NAACP is a civil rights organization founded in 1909. The NAACP has a long history of combatting segregation, Jim Crow, police misconduct, and other injustices. In March, Jim Lawson criticizes the NAACP for being too conservative. Lewis saw Thurgood Marshall, a leader of the NAACP, as someone who misunderstood what was needed to combat segregation.

When protestors at the lunch counter sit-ins were arrested, they were represented in court by 13 lawyers, including Z. Alexander Looby. On April 19, 1960, Looby’s home was bombed. That same day, 3,000 protestors marched to City Hall to demand that Mayor West address the violence and continued segregation. March: Book One depicts this event, in which Diane Nash confronts West and asks if he will recommend lunch counters be desegregated.