March: Book One (March, #1)

March: Book One frames the personal genesis of a national struggle within the hopeful morning of Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration. As Congressman John Lewis prepares to attend the historic ceremony, a visit from constituents prompts a journey back to his childhood on an Alabama sharecropper’s farm. The narrative vividly captures his early yearning for the pulpit, practiced on a captive congregation of chickens, and the dawning awareness of the segregated world beyond his family’s land. Lewis’s intellectual and moral awakening crystallizes during a trip north, where he first witnesses a less overtly segregated society, and through the radio sermons of a young Martin Luther King Jr., which introduce him to the concept of the social gospel. His determination leads him to Nashville for seminary, where he encounters the disciplined philosophy of nonviolent resistance under the guidance of James Lawson. The core of the book meticulously details the formation of the Nashville Student Movement, their rigorous workshops simulating the brutalities of lunch counter protests, and their strategic planning. The narrative builds with palpable tension through the launch of the sit-ins themselves. Powell’s stark black-and-white art renders the visceral reality of the protests—the smoke blown in faces, the hurled epithets, the physical assaults—and the protestors’ steadfast, trained silence. This volume culminates not with a sweeping national victory, but with a hard-won local triumph: the desegregation of Nashville’s lunch counters following strategic pressure and a powerful public statement from the mayor. It is a story of movement-building, where personal conviction is forged into collective action, setting the stage for the larger battles to come.