The Silence of Our Friends, by authors, Mark Long and Jim Demonakos with art by Nate Powell, is a graphic novel about real events that occurred during the Black American Civil Rights Era. When you read the Author’s Note at the end of the book, you will discover that one of the authors, Mark Long, was a character in the book. Mark Long was a child at the time of the novel’s events of the 1960s and he was telling the story of his father, a local television reporter, who had developed a friendship with a Black American man.
The content of the graphic novel, The Silence of Our Friends, tells how a white family and a black family became friends before the police riot against Black American students at Texas Southern University or “TSU” occurred. We don’t know whether Mark Long’s family and Larry Thomas’ family can continue being friends after the stressful events of the police riot and jury trial. Parts of that autobiographical story witnessed partly by Mark Long as a child was fictionalized for “emotional authenticity” as he says in his Author’s Note.
Some details in The Silence of Our Friends, such as names, had to be changed in order to tell the story. Therefore, there is a mix of real historic events and fictionalized details. When you read the Author’s Note at the end, Mark Long tells us about the facts of the story. According to the Author’s Note at the end of the novel, the story really did involve Texas Southern University, Wheeler Avenue, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, a police officer’s being shot by another police officer, and a black person, who was wrongfully arrested and put on trial for the shooting.
This graphic novel, The Silence of Our Friends, is recommended for historic curiosity and for academic studies in sociology, history, and journalism. It took just as long to read this graphic novel as it would a regular text-filled book. Analyzing the pictures in relation to the dialogue is just as time-consuming as reading a novel without any pictures. If you are writing a research paper on race relations in Texas during the 1960s, you should cite information from the Author’s Note, which tells the core facts of the police conflict with Black American students at TSU in addition to citing other sources like newspaper articles, broadcast news clips, and public records regarding those events.
If you are a history professor or a history teacher, your assigning this graphic novel on the Black American Civil Rights movement to your students might be a pleasant departure from text-filled books that are normally assigned to students as required readings. By assigning this graphic novel to your students’ reading list, you will be breaking up the monotony of your students’ reading text-filled books and novels for classes. A graphic novel such as this one with a relevant academic subject matter might be something that students can look forward to reading.
Everyone should read The Silence of Our Friends and compare and contrast then, the 1960s, and now, the 2010s. Have race relations improved between Black Americans and the immigrant majority since the 1960s? Are Black Americans truly equal human beings in 21st century United States? Are law enforcement officers still a source of racial oppression for Black Americans as it was in the 1960s? Is the news media still biased? Do you think the facts matter in reporting the news? I think people should read The Silence of Our Friends, because it has relevance to social conditions that exist today in the United States. Ask yourselves the above questions and come to your own conclusions. You are welcome to share your thoughts on this blog.
Reference
Long, Mark, Jim Demonakos, and Nate Powell. The Silence of Our Friends. New York: First Second, 2012.
Links:
Mark Long featured at the Texas Library Association website
The Silence of Our Friends book trailer on YouTube
The Silence of Our Friends on Nate Powell’s site
The Silence of Our Friends at Macmillan Publishers
The Silence of Our Friends at Amazon.com
The Silence of Our Friends at Barnes & Noble
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