Graphic Memories of the Civil Rights Movement : Reframing History in Comics, ...

The history of America’s civil rights movement is marked by narratives that we hear retold again and again. This has relegated many key figures and turning points to the margins, but graphic novels and graphic memoirs present an opportunity to push against the consensus and create a more complete history. Graphic Memories of the Civil Rights Movement showcases five vivid examples of this:Ho Che Andersons King (2005), which complicates the standard biography of Martin Luther King Jr.; Congressman John Lewiss three-volume memoir, March (2013–2016); Darkroom (2012), by Lila Quintero Weaver, in which the author recalls her Argentinian father’s participation in the movement and her childhood as an immigrant in the South; the bestseller The Silence of Our Friends by Mark Long, Jim Demonakos, and Nate Powell (2012), set in Houstons Third Ward in 1967; and Howard Cruses Stuck Rubber Baby (1995), whose protagonist is a closeted gay man involved in the movement. In choosing these five works, Jorge Santos also explores how this medium allows readers to participate in collective memory making, and what ths reveal about the process by which history is (re)told, (re)produced, and (re)narrativized. Concluding the work is Santos’s interview with Ho Che Anderson.