March Book One Turning Points

Try to put yourself into a situation where you are being pushed around and treated wrongly only because of your skin color. Would you try to stand up against this abuse or would you just let it happen? In a graphic novel titled March Book One, by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin, we follow the story of a young John Lewis going through his life being discriminated against for his skin color but wanting to make a change for his community. At an early age of about 6 years old, Lewis began to notice how the people of color were being treated wrongly by those that were white, and as he got older, he began to experience many events that drove him to be a civil rights activist that he became in order to help change our country. There are many turning points

The first major turning point that Lewis experienced was his trip to Buffalo with his uncle.

During this time, he learned that he did not have to live in segregation at his hometown and wanted to make a change. In March book one, Lewis states, “I couldn’t believe it, they had white people

living next door to them.” (Lewis and Aydin 43). In other words, John Lewis was astounded by the fact that both people of color and those that were white were living together without any issues of each other's race. While in Buffalo, Lewis was able to walk around the street and buy candy from white folks, this was completely different to what he was used to back home. Lewis states,

“After that trip, home never felt the same, and neither did I.” (Lewis and Aydin 47). In making this comment, John Lewis explains how after arriving home from his trip, he changed as a person and would then begin to see discrimination all around him that he would not have seen before.

Because of his trip to Buffalo, Lewis was able to experience how nice it would be to live equally with white people and strived for everyone else to feel it one day as

The workshop was a church that people of color would go to because they were forced to worship from the balcony at the white church. Here he met a college student, such as himself, named Jim Lawson who talked about using nonviolence to eradicate the country of segregation. While Lawson explained himself, Lewis states that “His words liberated me. I thought, this is it, this is the way out.” (Lewis and Aydin 78). Lewis’s point in this comment was how Lawson’s theory of using nonviolence to fight the evil of segregation made him feel like this was the path he was supposed to take. After getting more students to go the workshop, Lewis and the group began to start practicing on how to take in the hate they will experience. They called each other names and treated each other harshly, but Lawson taught them how to protect themselves. According to Lewis, “the hardest part to learn, to truly understand, deep in your heart, was to how to find love for your attacker.” (Lewis and Aydin 82). Basically, he was saying to not hate their attackers as it is not the way of nonviolence, but to love them so they can prove their faith in the method they plan to take. Jim Lawson not only helped open Lewis’s eyes to