March

I am so glad I read March. Having been born right in the middle of the time period it covers, and not too far away, I knew nothing of what was going on, and I never really learned the details as well as I should. These events were not anything I would have learned about in history class, as they were much too recent, but I always felt I should just know about it, so I never bothered doing any real reading. I was raised around people who talked and believed just like the more vile white people presented in the clear drawings of these books, and I also knew white people who had marched and protested and prayed and written letters and dreamed of a non-segregated future. So March was a bit like going back to my childhood, including some of the uglier aspects.

“The coloreds were better off when we took care of them. They liked being slaves.” “It's just not natural sitting next to a nigra. If God had meant for us to be near them, he wouldn't have put them all in Africa to begin with.” “You know what they want to do? They want our women!” I heard parents of friends say things like that. I would go home and ask my mother to clarify. She never forbade me from associating with the kids, but she made sure I knew that their parents were full of something unwholesome.

Lewis and his two associates have produced a great reminder for those who maybe have forgotten, and an excellent history lesson for younger folk who never did know just how terrible things were. I know that white people can sometimes get tired of “Black Lives Matter” and “uppiter blacks,” but March makes it impossible to ignore the reality that things are the way they are now because of how things were sixty years ago, and how they were 100 or 300 years ago. The past is still with us, and the only way to get beyond it is to know the truth and strive to make things better.