March: Book One

When Lewis returned to Alabama, he was reminded at every turn of how different his life was compared to the white children in his community. Black citizens’ roads remained unpaved and their school buses were dilapidated. The schools of white children had nice playgrounds, unlike the dirt yards of Lewis’s own schoolhouse. Every day, his school bus passed prison work gangs, and Lewis took note of how the prisoners were almost always Black.

Despite its shortcomings, Lewis loved his school. The library exposed him to several new worlds and ideas, and he devoted himself to reading and studying. Yet, when farm work had to be done, Lewis was forced to put his education on hold. In the mornings when he was supposed to head to the field with his family, Lewis hid, so he could sneak off to school. Each time Lewis ran away to get on the school bus, he returned home to be reprimanded, but his father never punished him.

In May 1954, Lewis learned of the US Supreme Court’s decision in the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. Brown challenged a state law that prevented Black students from attending white schools. The Supreme Court justices unanimously agreed that school segregation deprived Black students of educational opportunities. Lewis was excited; he felt like the case would change things for him and that soon he would be going to one of the nice schools the white children attended. However, his parents warned him again not to get into trouble; after a lifetime of experiencing racism in the American South, they did not trust that this one court case would change anything. Lewis was frustrated with his parents and the other adults in his life. His minister never spoke out about the injustices Lewis knew existed. Then, one day, he heard a young preacher, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speak on the radio. King applied principles of faith to the injustices Lewis saw every day. Lewis tried to learn as much as he could about Dr. King.

Later that May, a second ruling in Brown v. Board led senators to swear their defiance of the court. Lewis recognized violence over this decision was inevitable. Then Emmett Till’s body was found at the bottom of a river in Money, Mississippi. One illustration shows the body of Emmett with a tire tied around his neck. The two white men who had been witnessed kidnapping Emmett were found not guilty by an all-white jury. A few months later, the men even confessed to the murder in a magazine interview but nothing was done.

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, just a few miles from Lewis’s home, for refusing to leave her bus seat to sit in the back with other Black passengers. Lewis and his family followed the resulting bus boycott closely, and Lewis felt inspired by the influence King had as a preacher. A few days before his 16th birthday, Lewis delivered his first sermon and was featured in a local newspaper.