My wife brought home the first volume of John Lewis’s book series, March, and eventually went back to the library to get the other two. The three are all written as graphic novels and depict Lewis’s early life and the journey he took in the 1950s and 60s as he engaged in sit-ins and marches throughout the deep south, interwoven with scenes from Barack Obama’s first inauguration in 2009.
The series brings home a remarkable period in Lewis’s life and in the life of the nation, as the deep south is brought kicking and screaming to a place where black people are given any seat on a bus, service in diners and restaurants, tickets at movie theaters, and most significantly the right to vote. The books depict the travails and dangers and sacrifices, the strength and courage it took to win the day.
This, in tandem with finishing the first—and only?—season of The Gray House, has opened my eyes wider to the penchant humans have for embodying tall tales and holding onto lies with a death grip. I realize the writers and producers of The Gray House probably employed a certain dramatic license, but the core of the message is a familiar and likely accurate recounting of the long slog, of what it took to bring an end to secession and slavery in this country. And how entrenched many were, how firmly they held onto a “way of life.”
Between the books and the streaming—and the current administration’s insistence on returning to the “good ol’ days” when people knew their place– what has become painfully obvious is that colorblindness is still a long way from a certain universality.
Though maybe colorblindness has never been the goal. Maybe it goes beyond that, to a place where we simply carry on without making a big fuss over our different hues. To where we simply, finally understand that our intrinsic value has always been more about the intangibles and way less about skin-deep pigmentations.
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