John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell presents how police corruption and brutality was a major influence in the perpetualization of racism in America during the civil rights era and even today. They do this by not being afraid to pull any punches or censor anything in the art style and literary readings of March. March goes through the life of John Lewis and his struggle to be a leader in a time of great adversity. The story follows through his life as he becomes chairman of the SNCC and lives on to be one of America’s greatest unsung political heroes. One of the examples used in March to (quite literally) illustrate how police corruption and integrated systemic racism effected the American mindset was the “supposed” homicide and subsequent
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Fannie Lou Hamer. Her testimony in front of the credentials committee at the Democratic National Convention of 1964 shook the nation. She spoke of the immensely troubling time she had becoming a voting, first-class citizen, of the anger that her employer of 18 years had felt when he found out she had gone to register, and of the sixteen shots taken at the house she was staying in. She went on to talk about her arrest by the hands of the State Highway Patrolman as she got off a bus to help her fellow man as they too were arrested. As she was (literally) kicked into the patrol car and entered the jailhouse, she recounted hearing “... licks and horrible screams…” emanate from within the jail’s walls. She recounted hearing beaten, and what she could only assume was the sound of women being raped, screaming and “praying for god to have mercy on these men”. Worst of all, however, she recounted being told “we’re going to make you wish you was dead” (Aydin, 110-111) before being forced to lay face down and forcefully beaten by her fellow jailmates. She said all of this on live television to testify to the corruption and brutality of the federal government’s officials in an attempt to get the committee to recognize the freedom
Fannie Lou Hamer. Her testimony in front of the credentials committee at the Democratic National Convention of 1964 shook the nation. She spoke of the immensely troubling time she had becoming a voting, first-class citizen, of the anger that her employer of 18 years had felt when he found out she had gone to register, and of the sixteen shots taken at the house she was staying in. She went on to talk about her arrest by the hands of the State Highway Patrolman as she got off a bus to help her fellow man as they too were arrested. As she was (literally) kicked into the patrol car and entered the jailhouse, she recounted hearing “... licks and horrible screams…” emanate from within the jail’s walls. She recounted hearing beaten, and what she could only assume was the sound of women being raped, screaming and “praying for god to have mercy on these men”. Worst of all, however, she recounted being told “we’re going to make you wish you was dead” (Aydin, 110-111) before being forced to lay face down and forcefully beaten by her fellow jailmates. She said all of this on live television to testify to the corruption and brutality of the federal government’s officials in an attempt to get the committee to recognize the freedom