I want to be honest with you. I did not know how important John Lewis was to the Civil Right Movement before 2013, when March Book One was published. I knew of and studied other important figures in the fight for civil rights: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Thurgood Marshall, Malcom X and even Claudette Colvin. Yet, I was unaware that the current Congressman from Georgia had played such a key role in securing the rights we all have today. The March graphic novel series gave me a first person perspective on the civil rights movement while Powell’s powerful and stark artwork bring events over 50 years ago to life.
This National Book Award-winning graphic memoir takes readers through Lewis’s life, beginning with his childhood on a sharecropping farm Alabama. He drew inspiration from the Montgomery Bus Boycott and Dr. King’s work, and began to develop his own path as a civil rights activist. By the age of 23, he earned a spot as a keynote speaker at the March on Washington for his work as a student organizer. His story is framed by the day the United States inaugurated its first African American president, Barack Obama. This creates a context that serves to show how far we’ve come in the struggle for equality. Current events have created a divide within this nation while unveiling that we still have a long battle to face. I have been inspired and empowered by John Lewis’s courage to continue to stand up for what is right through non-violent protests and staying active in the political process as he continues to ask:
“If not us, then who? If not now, then when?”
John Lewis is a living legend who continues to stand up for the rights of all people while still getting into “good trouble.”
Civil Rights activist John Lewis tells the story of his childhood and early years as a student in Alabama. His dedication to the principles of non-violence and equality lead him and fellow students to organize protests against segregation in their city. Exciting, inspiring and educational, Lewis’ first book shows how a legend is made.
Congressman John Lewis, an American icon and one of the key figures of the civil rights movement, continues his award-winning graphic novel trilogy with co-writer Andrew Aydin and artist Nate Powell, inspired by a 1950s comic book that helped prepare his own generation to join the struggle. Now, March brings the lessons of history to vivid life for a new generation, urgently relevant for today’s world. After the success of the Nashville sit-in campaign, John Lewis is more committed than ever to changing the world through nonviolence – but as he and his fellow Freedom Riders board a bus into the vicious heart of the deep south, they will be tested like never before. Faced with beatings, police brutality,imprisonment, arson, and even murder, the movement’s young activists place their lives on the line while internal conflicts threaten to tear them apart. But their courage will attract the notice of powerful allies, from Martin Luther King, Jr. to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy… and once Lewis is elected chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, this 23-year-old will be thrust into the national spotlight, becoming one of the “Big Six” leaders of the civil rights movement and a central figure in the landmark 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
The concluding volume in Congressman John Lewis’ graphic memoirs, Book Three focuses on the Civil Rights campaign for voting rights in the still-segregated South. Covering key historical moments like the bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama and the confrontation between peaceful protesters and armed policemen on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the struggle for equality continues through the sacrifices of heroes like John Lewis, Martin Luther King Jr., and many others.