Run: Book One

This section reveals a profound tension within John Lewis’s career and in thinking about civil rights. As he watches the war in Vietnam unfold with utter horror, especially in its effect on Black Americans, he recognizes The Internationalization of the Civil Rights Movement much more so than in March, showing his willingness to adapt to the cause as it evolves and grows. Vietnam proved that no amount of legislation was sufficient to solve the problem of racism if the same administration sponsoring that legislation was also working to subjugate nonwhite peoples in other parts of the world. A commitment to nonviolence was only consistent when paired with an opposition to war, even at the risk of alienating the presidential administration. To oppose the war on moral grounds is also to oppose the draft, especially because “men are going to have to leave the movement to go to Vietnam—but students can’t leave college to work in the movement because they will get drafted” (49). To be an effective leader of a divided movement, Lewis must make a strong stand, one which recognizes the linkages between violence abroad and racism at home. Thus, the scope and the setting of Lewis’s challenge broaden, introducing more conflicting variables and emphasizing a sense of intimidating grandiosity. Lewis’s initially moderate proposal to “sue the selective service because it is segregated” fails to persuade those who insist on a more fundamental critique of the draft (50). Lewis ultimately makes this statement, summoning the fiery righteousness he had displayed in the March on Washington in 1963. In his words, his full-throated condemnation of the US government:

[H]as been deceptive…in its claims of concern for the freedom of the Vietnamese people, just as the government has been deceptive…in claiming concern for the freedom of colored people in such other countries as the Dominican Republic, the Congo, South Africa, Rhodesia [now Zimbabwe], and in the United States itself (60).

Lewis effectively ties his movement to the forces of freedom abroad, but it will prove exceptionally difficult for him to do so without ultimately undermining his position as the leader of a nonviolent movement. If the US government is an inherently oppressive actor, both at home and abroad, then it will not heed the appeal to conscience on which nonviolence is based. If it operates in the language of violence, then there is a case to be made that only violence, or at least the threat of violence, and then a bid for political power would make more sense than a pure commitment to abstract principles. Lewis addresses The Promise and Limits of Nonviolence and was aware of those more focused on its limits, but up until this point he had been confident that his side of the argument would prevail. Even as he accepts a more international and revolutionary turn in the movement, he cannot help but regret that it increases the distance between the movement and his cherished principles. At this point in the story, Lewis still holds tight to his leadership role and longstanding belief system, though later in the graphic novel, he lightens his grip and begins to let go of his power in favor of the next chapter of activists.

Another challenge facing Lewis’s leadership is the complex nature of the struggle itself. In March, the enemy is highly organized and institutional: state governments are working with police, who in turn are working with militant groups like the Ku Klux Klan. These forces are responsible for tremendous injustice, as well as violence like the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in 1963, but the overtness and scale of their actions lends itself to confrontation, in the expectation that nonviolent resistance will expose the righteousness of the challenge to Jim Crow and prompt a federal reaction backed by large swaths of public opinion. In Run, violence and injustice persist, but on a smaller scale—an enraged store clerk hunts down and murders a young Black boy, an obviously prejudiced legislative body ousts Bond on the pretext of opposing his political speech, and procedural obstacles to voting in places like Lowndes County endures. Lewis is able to help organize a rally in Atlanta on Bond’s behalf, and he will ultimately take office for good in 1967, but in the shadow of the statue of Tom Watson, “a virulent and hateful Klansman and anti-Semite” (73), Lewis recognizes a dilemma. He cannot continue to focus his efforts only on the South but must transition, as King had, to building “national support in Black communities still suffering from segregation” from structural iniquities than Jim Crow-style legislation (65). Yet a national strategy is likely to lack the focus and intense public dedication of more local campaigns, where all involved can quickly identify a place to mobilize. Even successful efforts in that regard are difficult to sustain—Lewis arrives at Selma merely one year after Bloody Sunday to find only a small group interested in commemorating the event. It is the strongest possible foreshadowing that despite his many accomplishments, Lewis is already more representative of the movement’s past than its future.