King and the Montgomery Bus Boycott through his mentor, James Lawson, who worked for the Fellowship of Reconciliation (F.O.R.), an interfaith organization dedicated to promoting peace and justice. While March obviously isn’t the first work dealing with the history of the civil rights movement, and is not the first autobiography Lewis has written (his prose memoir, Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement, was published in 1998), March is unique in that it is a graphic novel, a medium chosen for its ties to the history of the movement, and to Lewis’ role in it. Book Two followed in 2015, and Book Three in 2016. Congressman Lewis was in attendance, along with his Digital Director and Policy Advisor Andrew Aydin, who conceived the idea for the book and co-wrote it with him, and artist Nate Powell, who illustrated and lettered the book. I first became acquainted with March in 2013, when Book One was published by Top Shelf Comics, and I covered the signing held at Midtown Comics in Manhattan as a photographer for Wikipedia. The author’s photo of the creative team, from left to right: Nate Powell, Andrew Aydin, and Congressman John Lewis. Only 23 at the time of his speech, he was the youngest of the speakers, and is the only one still living. He was the fourth person to speak at the March (Dr. As chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), he was one of the original 13 Freedom Riders, and one of the “Big Six” leaders of groups who organized the 1963 March on Washington. Lewis played many key roles in the civil rights movement, and the end of legalized racial segregation in the United States. As we reel from the horrors of Charlottesville, religious travel bans, mass child abuse inflicted upon brown children, and the continued practices of voter suppression, March serves as a warning of what it may look like if it swings back too far. It’s a reminder of where our country has been, and the direction from which that pendulum has swung. Living today at a time when white supremacists have actually managed to gain an inexplicable foothold back into the mainstream-something I never thought I’d ever experience in my lifetime-reading March, isn’t just a gratifying reading experience.

I had never heard of Lewis prior to encountering March, but having now read it, I’ve gained a better picture of not only his life, but of the internal and external obstacles that the Civil Rights movement navigated in the 50s and 60s.

I recently finished reading Book Three of March, the graphic novel autobiography of Atlanta Congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis.

Nate powell march