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I said everything I wanted to say in regards to the story as a whole and the art style in my review of March: Book One, so let's jump straight ahead to the things that March: Book Two taught me:

1) Due to his work with SNCC and other Civil Rights organizations John Lewis grew estranged from his family. He still saw his family over the summer, but Nashville and the growing Nashville student movement became his home.

2) The non-violent sit-ins were met with more and more aggressive responses. Once Lewis and his friends were locked in a restaurants with a fumigator used only for killing pests. He couldn't believe that the owners left them there to die. At last, the fire department rescued them.

3) In February 1961 they started to protest at local movie theaters with stand-ins. When they were refused, they would simply get back in line and wait their turn to ask for a movie ticket again, and thus slowing down theatres lines tremendously. John and his friends were arrested during such a protest, and thus he spent his 21st birthday (February 21, 1961) in jail.

4) Then the Freedom Rides began. The Freedom Rides were journeys by Civil Rights activists on interstate buses to segregated southern states to test the United States Supreme Court decision (Boynton v. Virginia, 1960) which ruled that segregation was unconstitutional for passengers engaged in interstate travel. The first Freedom ride from Washington D.C to New Orleans was organized by CORE in May, 1961. The riders actually thought that they might die on these trips and so all of them signed a will beforehand. <3

5) John's bus never made it to Birmingham. They were bombed. All his friends died. Only due to luck and circumstance, was John not present when this act of terror hit. He left the riders earlier because he had to get to a job interview in Philadelphia. Oh my.

6) It was later revealed that Eugene Connor, Birmingham's Chief of Police, promised the Ku Klux Klan fifteen minutes with the bus before he'd make any arrests. That is just so motherfucking sickening to read.

7) The attorney general and other politicians wanted the Freedom Rides to stop due to the violent response of white supremacist and moderates. However the Nashville Student Movement wanted to go on, and they had MLK's full support. However there was tension between MLK and the students because Dr King didn't wanna partake in any Freedom Ride himself.

8) During the early 1960s SNCC went through a rough patch because there was a lot of tension within the committee. Whilst people like John Lewis stood firm in their belief in non-violence, other important acitvists of the day, such as Jim Lawson, grew tired of it and preached that Black people should be able to defend themselves when harrassed. The fact that John Lewis had been arrested and beaten and jailed so many times held a lot of weight with his SNCC colleagues, and thus Jim Lawson was shunned and John was elected to SNCC's Executive Coordinating Committee.

9) While Dr. King was in Jail, Jim Bevel, who had left SNCC and joined SCLC, set out to organize and train Birmingham's children. Bevel went into Black schools and churches to teach hundreds of teenagers the techniques of nonviolence. <3 And thus on May 2, 1963 nearly a thousand of Birmingham's Black children marched that day. <3 Almost all of them were arrested. It was an embarrassment to the city.

10) In June 1963 a representative of SNCC was invited to the White House to join other leaders, discussing President Kennedy's proposed Civil Rights Bill as well as his concerns about the announcement of a March on Washington. The Kennedy Bill did not guarantee the right of all African Americans to vote. Only if you had a 6th grade education, you should be considered literate and able to vote. How fucking crazy! SNCC's position was that the only qualification for being to vote should be that of age and residence. Damn straight! And thus Kennedy's proposal got rejected.

11) One person deliberately not invited that day to attend the meeting with the president was Malcolm X of the Nation of Islam. John Lewis says he respected Malcolm, however he felt that he was never a part of the movement, because violence, no matter how justified, was not something he could accept. Malcolm X did attend the March on Washington saying that he may not fully support it, but because where Black folks be, is where he belongs.

12) The Civil Rights leaders who were present at the meeting � A. Philip Randolph, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Roy Wilkins of the NAACP, Jim Farmer of CORE, Whitney Young of the Urban League and John Lewis of SNCC � would be forever linked, known collectively as the Big Six. <3

13) The March on Washington was organized by A. Philip Randolph. John Lewis says of him that he could have been president if he had been born at another time. Out of all the people who spoke at the March, John Lewis is the only who is still around. <3

14) After the meeting Attorney General Robert Kennedy took John aside and told him that the young people of SNCC have educated and changed him. He now understands their struggle and will do what he can to help them along. This gave John hope, because it affirmed his belief that people are willing to learn, grow and change.