One Step at a Time
The Impact
One thing that this book never fails to do, is shock me. Perhaps it’s ignorance, perhaps it’s me forgetting everything I learned in my history classes, but the story that it tells feels so personal. It’s a different and fresh perspective from how we usually learn about these events, and it does an amazing job at putting us up close and personal with these tragedies.
The Horrors
Starting this week’s reading was heartbreaking. The very first few pages were dedicated to the bombing and the four tragic deaths of those innocent girls. Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley, and Denise McNair had their lives ripped away from them. Knowing that these four girls never got to grow up, really puts things into perspective. The aftermath of the bombing was also a shock. The multiple casualties that all linked back to this event just added a layer of horror. What really bothered me most however, was the fact that all of the deaths were of kids. It showed that even after all this time, things had yet to change. That they are about to enter an era that they know will bring a number of casualties like the ones caused on that day. Reading through these pages felt like a downward spiral from one awful event to the next.
The Assassination
Even if they showed steady progress, it all came crashing to a stop when John F. Kennedy was assassinated. This was a huge turning point, especially since the one in charge now was President Johnson. John Lewis however, wanted to give him a chance. Although President Johnson didn’t have the best track record when it came to helping with passing civil rights legislation. The only thing I wish he’d done differently is that he would’ve asked John Lewis to continue the protests. They would add more pressure to the up coming election, sure, but that wouldn’t be a problem if you had the people you are fighting for, be able to vote for you. That’s why I found it kind of counterproductive, when he was asking civil rights activist groups to halt their work.
I agree with you when you talk about how this book continues to “shock” the reader into understanding the realities that existed during the civil rights movement. I believe that many of the textbooks that handle this topic tend to sugar coat it and not give a very detailed account of the horrors that did exist. It will be hard, but I do intend on seeing the upcoming movie on Emmet Till’s life.
I would love to know how you feel this connects to your own life and what we see happening in today’s society.
I agree that there is a shock factor that comes with reading March oftentimes. I feel like we do not often learn about these aspects of our US history growing up. This story has given me so much more information on the Civil Rights Movement than any history class has ever done. When learning about it you only learn the bare minimum but you do not learn about the terrors that people went through in their search for freedom.
I felt the same way when reading this section of the book, that there was just one horror after the next. It was heartbreaking when I first started reading this book and read that four little girls were killed by a bomb before their lives even started. It was overwhelming to read about everything that was happening during this time just one after another. It is impossible to imagine what it must have been like for the people who were fighting during this time. It was horrible to read about all the casualties of kids in the time after the four girls were killed, yet with all the tragedy that happened this was the first time I had ever read or heard about everything that happened. It seems like growing up they would just try to skip past everything that happened during this time from even book 1 until now reading book 3. So much of what I have read was new information that I wish had been told sooner. Even growing up we would hear about the tragedies of 9/11 every year without fail. Yet we never heard about how many people were truly lost when black people were fighting for their freedom. When reading these books, one reoccurring thought I had was why this was never talked about as much as other topics in school. This was a very integral part of our history yet so often it is just glossed over.
Reading these March Books does indeed make your stomach turn. Every time I read each book, I am somehow constantly surprised and appalled by how society used to be. The distrubing thing about it too is that it was only but 50 years ago! I agree with you when you say that these books are teaching and educating us in a new way and from a different perspective. It makes me wonder why we weren’t taught about all of these horrific acts through the eyes of people acting suffering instead of reading facts from out of a textbook… but thats neither here nor there at the moment. I thought being able to read about how life was truthfully like for black people through there word of mouth is extremely eye opening. The march books cartoon element is also a fantastic visual aid to help get the point across even more so.
Reading the section of the book that tells you about the deaths of the girls from the bombing is indeed quite a tearjerking. All of these horrible acts of straight carnage is something that I wish we had learned more about in school growing up. These books do such a great job of captivating a sense of genuine perspective and narrative. I feel as if the stories told aren’t being fluffed up or exaggerated. Thats another element as to why it feels even more so heartbreaking to read along with get a visual sense of the horror that was occurring at the time. I definitely have learned almost three times as much about the civil rights movement simply from reading these books as I ever did throughout my entire k-12 school career. I agree with your statement about wishing president Johnson would have wanted John Lewis to keep protesting.