From the view of his office across from the nation’s Capitol building in Washington, it is hard to believe the man dressed in a suit with an official government lapel pen affixed to his coat was the same man who, as a college student, had been spat on, beaten and cursed by racist thugs, and arrested and jailed more times than he’d like to remember while crusading to end racial segregation in America.
Looking around his office, one wouldn’t have to wonder if U.S. Congressman John Lewis’s story is true. It’s filled with pictures documenting his college days as a civil rights activist and history books that recount his story. Now, one can hear Lewis’s story straight from the man himself in his new non-fiction paperback graphic novel, “March: Book One”, the first part of a trilogy that vividly recounts, in action-packed comic strip format, the heroic and oft-times frightening chapter in American history.
The 120-page graphic novel recounts when Lewis and fellow classmates cut classes to risk their lives to participate in weeks of peaceful demonstrations protesting forced, legalized racial segregation in Nashville, as did students in several other cities across the South. Those students eventually attracted more students and adults supporters from around the country to their cause. They protested racial discrimination in interstate commercial transportation, public eating places, movie theaters, public restrooms and water facilities.
To address that dazed look most young people give when asked about the civil rights era, Lewis agreed to an idea suggested by Andrew Aydin, an avid comic book enthusiast and Congressional staffer who grew up in Lewis’s Georgia congressional district. Aydin suggested Lewis tell his story in comic book form to reach young people.
With the artwork of New York Times best-selling cartoonist Nate Powell, Lewis and Aydin hope telling the story of Lewis and the role of college students in the civil rights movement, via graphic illustrations with text, will be as appealing and inspiring to students and teachers of today as any fictional hero.
“I hope this book will inspire another generation to speak up, speak out and make some noise,” Lewis says of his new offering, published by a small Georgia publisher that focuses on graphic illustration fiction novels aimed at young readers.
“This book is primarily for a new generation that didn’t grow up and live through the ’60s,” Lewis says. “It says to them, ‘There were some young people and some not so young people who were inspired to find a way to get in the way to make trouble, necessary trouble,’” Lewis adds, referring to the civil rights demonstrations. “We were simple, ordinary young people who saw a problem and decided to do something about it. The book is a reminder to today’s young people [that] ‘you too can do something.’”
