From Alabama to Tahrir Square

NOTES

• On the spontaneity of the sit-ins in news reports, see for example Helen Fuller, “We Are So Very Happy,” The New Republic, April 25, 1960, 13–16.
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• Several popular and scholarly histories of the sit-ins mention that at least one of the original Greensboro Four read the comic book. See for example Juan Williams, Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954–1965 (New York: Penguin Books, 1988), 124–25; Aldon Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement (New York: The Free Press, 1984), 165–66; and John Lewis, Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998), 91.
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• Jesse Singal, “Did a Martin Luther King Comic Book Help Inspire the Egyptian Revolution?” Boston.com, Feb. 11, 2011, http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/blogs/the_angle/2011/02/did_a_martin_lu.html.
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• Juan William, Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954–1965 (New York: Penguin Books, 1988), 124–25.
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• Ronald Walters, “The Great Plains Sit-in Movement, 1958–60,” Great Plains Quarterly, 1996.
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• John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell, March: Book One (Marietta, Ga.: Top Shelf Productions, 2013).
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• On diffusion, see for example Kenneth T. Andrews and Michael Biggs, “The Dynamics of Protest Diffusion: Movement Organizations, Social Networks and News Media in the 1960 Sit-ins,” American Sociological Review 71 (2006): 752–77.
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• See for example Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff, The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle and the Awakening of a Nation (New York: Knopf, 2006). For a study of public relations during the civil rights era (including the use of comics), see Vanessa Murphree, The Selling of Civil Rights: The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Use of Public Relations (London: Routledge, 2006).
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• Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics (New York: William Morrow, 1994), 30.
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• Glenn Smiley to Heil Bolinger, Feb. 29, 1956, The Fellowship of Reconciliation Records (DG 013), Swarthmore College Peace Collection, box 19 (cited as FORR), Swarthmore, Pa.
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• Document entitled “Non-Violent Workshops,” box 19, FORR.
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• Alfred Hassler to Edward Reed, May 2, 1956, box 19, FORR.
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• Benton Resnik had authored several titles that were reviewed by the Cincinnati-based Committee on the Evaluation of Comic Books and deemed “objectionable” as part of the 1950s regulation of comic books under the “Comics Code.” The committee vetted hundreds of comic books and their findings were often printed in Parents' Magazine. For Resnik, see Andrew V.B. Aydin, “The Comic Book That Changed the World” (master's thesis, Georgetown University, 2012), 55. On the “Comics Code” and The Committee for the Evaluation of Comic Books, see Amy Kiste Nyberg, Seal of Approval: The History of the Comics Code (Oxford: University of Mississippi Press), 1998.
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• Alfred Hassler to Benton Resnik, May 4, 1957, box 19, FORR.
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• Ibid.
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• “Proposed Comic Book for Use in South,” Nov. 23, 1956, box 19, FORR.
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• Ibid.
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• Alfred Hassler to Martin Luther King Jr., Sept. 24, 1957, box 19, FORR.
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• As part of his study, Andrew Aydin consulted a comic book expert, Eddie Campbell, to examine the art in “The Montgomery Story.” Campbell concluded that because the art in the book was “generic in so many ways” it was difficult to conclude with certainty who drew it. He added that it was very different from Capp's style. See Aydin, “The Comic Book That Changed the World,” 65.
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• On the connection of Resnik to Toby Press see Aydin, “The Comic Book That Changed the World,” 55.
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• J.K. Griffin, “A Brief Glossary of Comic Book Terminology,” Serials Review 24, no. 1 (1998): 74.
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• “Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story,” The Fellowship of Reconciliation, 1. Like most comic books, “The Montgomery Story” was clearly a collaborative effort. It is unclear who the author of the text was, as archival documents show that Alfred Hassler, Benton Resnik, and even Martin Luther King Jr. all had input on the script. The artist is unknown and no credit is given anywhere in the book to the publisher.
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• Ibid.
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• Ibid.
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• Ibid.
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• “The Montgomery Story,” 2.
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• Will Campbell to Alfred Hassler, July 17, 1957, box 19, FORR.
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• Matthew McCollum to Alfred Hassler, n.d., box. 19, FORR.
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• On gun ownership among African Americans, see Charles E. Cobb Jr., This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible (New York: Basic Books, 2014); and Nicholas Johnson, Negroes and the Gun: The Black Tradition of Arms (New York: Prometheus Books, 2014).
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• “The Montgomery Story,” 2.
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• Ibid.
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• Ibid. King talks about the fear of “economic reprisals” among Montgomery's less educated in Martin Luther King Jr., Stride toward Freedom (New York: Harper & Row, 1958), 37.
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• “The Montgomery Story,” 4.
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• Ibid, 6.
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• Francesca Polletta, “Plotting Protest,” in Stories of Change, ed. Joseph E. Davis (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002), 37. Polletta uses the term “emplotted” to describe the way a plot is crafted in movement narratives.
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• “The Montgomery Story,” 8.
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• Ibid.
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• Ibid, 9.
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• Stride toward Freedom, 85.
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• “The Montgomery Story,” 12.
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• Ibid, 13.
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• Ibid, 16.
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• Martin Luther King Jr. to Alfred Hassler, Nov. 1, 1957, box 19, FORR.
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• Alfred Hassler to Roy Wilkins, Aug. 2, 1957, box 19, FORR.
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• Alfred Hassler to A. Phillip Randolph, Aug. 23, 1957, box 19, FORR.
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• Alfred Hassler to Russell Lasley, Aug. 25, 1957, box 19, FORR.
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• Martin Luther King Jr. to Alfred Hassler, n.d., box 19, FORR; and flyer entitled “The Montgomery Story!” box 19, FORR.
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• Roy McCorkel to Alfred Hassler, April 8, 1958, box 19, FORR.
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• Hilbert L. Bradley to Alfred Hassler, Feb. 18, 1959, box 19, FORR.
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• Lewis, Walking with the Wind, 74.
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• Aydin, “The Comic Book That Changed the World,” 70.
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• Joseph Hughes, “Congressman John Lewis and Andrew Aydin Talk ‘Inspiring the Children of the Movement’ with ‘March’ [interview],” Comics Alliance, Sept. 16, 2013, http://comicsalliance.com/congressman-john-lewis-interview-march-an-drew-aydin-top-shelf/.
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• Copies of the book in these languages are available in box 19 of the FORR archive at Swarthmore College.
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• Brian Percy Bunting to Alfred Hassler, June 17, 1958, box 19, FORR.
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• Alfred Hassler to Hugh Brock, Feb. 21, 1958, box 19, FORR.
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• Jerome N. Nkosi to FOR, July 27, 1959, box 19, FORR.
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• “South African Fellowship of Reconciliation News Letter,” No. 35, March 1966, box 19, FORR.
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• Michael Cavna, “Amid Revolution, Arab Cartoonists Draw Attention to Their Cause,” The Washington Post, March 7, 2011, http://voices.washingtonpost.com/comic-riffs/2011/03/arab_cartoons.html.
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• The word “semiliterate” is used in a letter written in 1997 by then-Director of Communication Richard Deats to describe the intended audience of the comic book. See Richard Deats to Paul Gravett, April 30, 1997, box 19, FORR.
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• Deats's letter said the comic was “originally intended to convey to semiliterate persons the story of nonviolence and its effectiveness as seen in the Montgomery movement.” See ibid.
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• See for example Brian Ward, Radio and the Struggle for Civil Rights in the South (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004); Kay Mills, Changing Channels: The Civil Rights Case That Transformed Television (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2004); Sasha Torres, Black, White and in Color: Television and Black Civil Rights (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2003); and Brian Ward, ed., Media, Culture, and the Modern African American Freedom Struggle (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2001).
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• Andrews and Biggs, The Dynamics of Protest Diffusion, 770.
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• Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, “The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past,” Journal of American History 91, no. 4 (March, 2005): 1234. On Rustin, see Bayard Rustin, Down the Line: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1971), 111. See also Charles W. Eagles, “Toward New Histories of the Civil Rights Era,” Journal of Southern History, 66 (November 2000).
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• Roberts and Klibanoff, The Race Beat, 11.
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• Joseph E. Davis, ed., “Introduction,” in Stories of Change, 11.
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• See for example Manuel Castells, Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age (Malden, Mass.: Polity Press, 2012); Wael Ghonim, Revolution 2.0: The Power of the People Is Greater Than the People in Power: A Memoir (New York: Houghton, Mifflin, Harcourt, 2012); and Barry Wellman and Lee Rainie, Networked (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2012).
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