Analysis Of March By John Lewis

In the novel, March, John Lewis illustrates how the desire to do better for oneself will always be met with resistance from others. Lewis portrays how the desire to do better for oneself will always be met with resistance from others through state-sanctioned police brutality against peaceful protesters. To illustrate this, Lewis recounts how Joe Rauh arranged for a series of testimonies on television, one of which included Fanny Lou Hamer’s. Hamer recollects how she was arrested after attending a voter registration workshop, and how she was brutally beaten within her cell. While recalling her arrest, Hamer notes “I began to scream, and one white man got up and began to beat me in my head and tell me to hush. One white man -- my dress had …show more content…
For example, as Lewis travels to Dothan on a greyhound bus, he witnesses more violence. White teenagers on the street celebrate the bombing of the church, as more African-Americans are killed and harassed on the suspicion on being civil rights activists. Several white teenagers, while throwing rocks, begin shouting “2, 4, 6, 8! We don’t want to integrate” (13). Consequently, the white teenagers resist civil rights effort, and the push for better treatment of African-Americans, simply by declaring their aversion towards integration. The teenagers’ chant was not a spectacular confrontation, but rather another everyday instance of racism that could have occurred to anyone, setting the climate of this time period as hostile, and averse to change. Further on, for instance, Lewis talks about African-American voter suppression, and how conditions are made difficult to discourage African-Americans from registering to vote. Even if they succeed in overcoming the many obstacles, including near-impossible literacy tests, they face being fired from their jobs, or evicted from their homes. Lewis also states that “their house could be burned down by the KKK. Or worse” (32). Therefore, it is demonstrated that simply for getting the opportunity to vote, something considered a radical political act at the time, African-Americans faced pushback from the average Americans in their lives, including their bosses and landlords. This racism, and aversion to basic liberties, was brought on simply by attempting to obtain the same rights as others, and wanting to better their status in society, and is intended to discourage change. Another notable illustration is the creation of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party for the purpose of challenging segregation-based politics. The participation of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic