March

The second March book is a little longer than the first, and left me with a lot to think about.

Lewis discusses tensions between different people and organizations all dedicated to fighting anti-Black racism. Lewis himself struggles to reconcile his perspective with both those older and younger than him. Thurgood Marshall doesn't go far enough, but Stokely Carmichael goes too far.

Priorities shift. People disagree about how (and whether) to involve politicians and journalists in organizing. People disagree about the effectiveness of nonviolence. Some want to focus on direct action and civil disobedience, whereas others emphasize legislation and voter registration. Everyone has their own convictions about the best ways to make real change.

Decades later, the same questions drive and divide activists. What role does spirituality play in political engagement? What happens when anti-racist and labor activism overlap? Is incremental reform the most realistic way to progress, or was Audre Lorde right about the master's tools? Should we leave respectability politics in the 20th Century?

I also want to mention how well Lewis drives home the point that this is recent history. Lewis was alive when Emmett Till was murdered and when Barack Obama was inaugurated. My parents were alive when Bull Connor turned fire hoses and dogs on demonstrators, some of them children. John Lewis doesn't let anyone get away with pretending that the horrors he (and so many others) lived through are distant or abstract. We should assign these books in high school social studies courses.