March: Book One, by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell, delves into a firsthand account of the suffering caused by segregation and the Jim Crow laws that ultimately led to the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. The graphic novel’s tone is set through an introduction that consists of a march for equality in which peaceful protesters are being “dealt with” by angry members of the police force, each officer equipped with tear gas. The writers, however, are careful to abstain from placing the blame for this mistreatment of the African American citizens of the United States; a gentle, nonjudgmental narrator simply states the facts and backs them up with vivid, emotionally invested art that brings the reader inexorably into that tumultuous time for the sole purpose of bringing to light what it was truly like for people living during that period of U.S. history. Important historical events and people are referenced, but so too are local heroes finally given their due; there exists here a parallelism between local and national struggles. Ultimately, the novel sheds rays of hope over the grim state of the government by highlighting the power of people’s voices in a democracy. The fact that this story is told by means of a book (a graphic novel, no less) puts power into the hands of the common individual. Through a medium in which offensive, inaccurate stereotypes abound, those very same tropes are shattered. Through March: Book One, it is shown that words change people; words can sway the opinion of an entire government. In short, words are power.
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