"Good trouble" - remembering John Lewis

Tim Woodcock writes: With the recent death of Rep. John Lewis, my mind keeps on coming back to graphic novel series March that tells Lewis’s life story and unpacks his philosophy of agitating for civil rights and causing what he called “good trouble.” It is now on my nightstand, waiting to be reread.

The March series, published between 2013 and 2016, was written as a collaboration between three people and is dedicated “to the past and future children of the [civil rights] movement.” Interviews with Lewis were shaped into a complex narrative by Andrew Aydin (a staffer who worked with Lewis in Washington, D.C.) and Aydin’s script was turned into a graphic novel by Nate Powell. Reduced to a simple timeline, March follows Lewis from his childhood in rural Alabama via the civil rights protests in the 1960s to his ascendance to Congress in the 1980s and his presence at Barack Obama’s inauguration as president in 2008. But the story blurs time in some interesting ways. For instance, images of the March on Washington of 1963 blur into with Obama’s inauguration almost 50 years later, and news conveyed via phone calls is sometimes used to connect differing time periods.

The potency of this book comes from how deeply it gets in to the familiar stories from the civil rights movement, telling them afresh and making the reader consider what would be like to in moments of critical decision (without retrospectively knowing the outcome). As the book makes clear, the protests didn’t “just happen” and were often the result of months of meticulous planning. One memorable scene shows a rehearsal of a sit-in at a segregated diner, using the basement of a Nashville church instead. The activists yell abuse at each other, push and squirt ketchup at each other - in short, dehumanized each other - to role play what would likely happen in a real situation. Those activists who were quick to anger were not allowed to take part in the actual sit ins.

Though I have never taught the books, I frequently encourage teenagers to pick up March as a companion to To Kill A Mockingbird, which I do teach – and they tend to love it.  I would imagine the March books will be added to reading lists as a result of Lewis’ death and in the light of the increased prominence this summer of the Black Lives Matter movement. Each of the three books can stand alone but it would make sense to start with book one. If you are new to graphic novels as a form, this is an excellent place to start: it shows what the form is capable of doing with a weighty subject, and Nate Powell’s dynamic drawing style is both accessible and at times daringly experimental.