Summary: A follow-up to the March Trilogy, taking up John Lewis’ story from 1964 until 1967.
I am a huge fan of the March Trilogy, a graphic novel trilogy that tells the early years of John Lewis’ life, framed as him remembering his early life at Obama’s Inauguration. The graphic novel format I think is particularly suited to the Civil Rights era history because the era’s evocativeness is part of its importance. It is one thing to read a narrative history about Civil Rights era marches, it is something else to see images of those marches with a mix of dialogue and narrative. There is a reason that the March Trilogy was the first graphic novel to win a Pulitzer.
In some ways, the history of the early years of the Civil Rights movement, Brown v Board in 1954 until Selma in 1965 is a simpler narrative. There was a righteous cause and while there was not universal agreement (civil disobedience was very controversial), once it was completed, the history has a clear narrative story of right and wrong. Post-1965 the narrative is much more nuanced and complicated. Pre-1965, the Civil Rights movement was largely focused on legal segregation and voting rights. Post-1965, the Civil Rights movement had less clear objectives. The Vietnam War and its disparate impact on minority communities, especially poor minority communities, and global solidarity with colonized communities around the world became the focus of some activists. Other activists tried to focus on poverty across racial lines. Other activists, especially women, began to focus on what we now call intersectionality and how different forms of discrimination overlap and act differently, and how the early Civil Rights era leadership had largely had a public male face with women doing significant parts of the organizing but were excluded from leadership.
This post-1965 era requires a much more nuanced story that we are still grappling with as a society. The current discussions over Critical Race Theory are not discussed in the book, but CRT arose because the legal changes as a result of pre-1965 work, did not result in significant cultural changes. In a 1981 interview, political consultant Lee Atwater famously discussed the rise of less overt appeals to race as a motivating factor for engaging white voters. Derrick Bell and others lawyers that contributed to the rise of Critical Race Theory knew that a law simply saying that discrimination on the basis of race being illegal did not mean that discrimination did not occur. And once there was a shift as a result of the 1976 Washington vs Davis case which required proof of intent to discriminate, a very high bar, more covert discrimination became not only normal but more insidious because it worked with the cultural concept of color blindness to prevent race from being openly discussed. The concept of a colorblind constitution or colorblind legal theory was used to oppose efforts to address historic racial discrimination.
Back to the book Run, much of the story of this first book in what I believe will be another trilogy is setting up the tension of the post-1965 civil rights era. John Lewis opposed the more militant Black Power methodology of Stokely Carmichael. Instead, he was interested in working through political systems and with an integrated civil rights movement to bring about cultural change. Lewis opposed the Vietnam War as did MLK and many others. But having a similar political opinion did not mean that there was an agreement about what to do to address the shared political opinion.
The March Trilogy was mostly a hero story. John Lewis was only 23 when he spoke at the March on Washington, yet already he was a veteran organizer and leader. At the end of the first book of the Run series, John Lewis had been voted out as head of SNCC, did not have a job, was nearly broke, and was seeking a new role and methodology to fulfill his calling. Jon Meacham’s recent biography of Lewis strongly captures how much of a calling that Lewis had to the civil rights movement, but Run is just getting started with that story.
As I was writing this, I looked at Amazon and realized that I pre-ordered Run just over 3 years ago. As far as I know, the next book in the series has not been announced. John Lewis was involved in the writing of this book before he passed away in 2020. But he will not be involved in future books beyond the early charting of them.
One of the features that I very much appreciated about Run is the series of short biographies at the end of the book. There are about 20 pages of summary descriptions of the characters of Run. Each of these is about a paragraph, so there is not a lot of detail, but the context is helpful. There is also a narrative description of the history that is graphically told in the main part of the book. And a section by the illustrator that describes the process of completing the book. The original March Trilogy was illustrated by Nate Powell. But he was not free to work on this one and it was illustrated by L Fury. The illustration retains a similar feel even if it is not the same as Powell’s work.
There is always a frustration in reading graphic novels that are produced serially, without the next volumes being complete. But if Run doesn’t find an audience, the remaining books will not be writing and illustrated. I really appreciate the more complicated nuanced story. It is not as action-oriented, but it is honest and truthful to the history. And that is what we need.
Run: Book One by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin Purchase Links: Hardcover, Kindle Edition