Congressman John Lewis (GA-5) is an American icon and key figure of the civil rights movement. His commitment to justice and nonviolence has taken him from an Alabama sharecropper's farm to the halls of Congress, from a segregated schoolroom to the 1963 March on Washington, and from receiving beatings from state troopers to receiving the Medal of Freedom from the first African-American president.
Now, to share his remarkable story with new generations, Lewis presents March, a graphic novel trilogy, in collaboration with co-writer Andrew Aydin and New York Times best-selling artist Nate Powell (winner of the Eisner Award and LA Times Book Prize finalist for Swallow Me Whole).
March is a vivid first-hand account of John Lewis' lifelong struggle for civil and human rights, meditating in the modern age on the distance traveled since the days of Jim Crow and segregation. Rooted in Lewis' personal story, it also reflects on the highs and lows of the broader civil rights movement.
Book One spans John Lewis' youth in rural Alabama, his life-changing meeting with Martin Luther King, Jr., the birth of the Nashville Student Movement, and their battle to tear down segregation through nonviolent lunch counter sit-ins, building to a stunning climax on the steps of City Hall.
Many years ago, John Lewis and other student activists drew inspiration from the 1958 comic book "Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story." Now, his own comics bring those days to life for a new audience, testifying to a movement whose echoes will be heard for generations.
Winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award — Special Recognition #1 Washington Post Bestseller A Coretta Scott King Honor Book An ALA Notable Book One of YALSA's Top 10 Great Graphic Novels for Teens One of YALSA's Top 10 Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults One of YALSA's Outstanding Books for the College Bound One of Reader's Digest's Graphic Novels Every Grown-Up Should Read Endorsed by NYC Public Schools' "NYC Reads 365" program Selected for first-year reading programs by Michigan State University, Marquette University, and Georgia State University Nominated for three Will Eisner Awards Nominated for the Glyph Award Named one of the best books of 2013 by USA Today, The Washington Post, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal,School Library Journal, Booklist, Kirkus Reviews, The Horn Book, Paste, Slate, ComicsAlliance, Amazon, and Apple iBooks.
March is the beautifully told and gorgeously illustrated first of three volumes recording the life of John Lewis, a Black man who is considered one of the “Big Six” leaders of the civil rights movement along with Martin Luther King Jr. and who served in the United States House of Representatives until his death in 2020.
I really love how more memoirs and biographies are now being recorded in graphic novel form. There’s lots of arguments to be had here for using this medium: it's easier to digest information that could be daunting when presented in a long biography, it's more accessible to a larger audience, etc., but in the volume itself there’s a mention of a comic about Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, and the Montgomery Bus Boycott published in 1957, Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story. It helped educate people on how nonviolence could be used to fight segregation and Jim Crow laws. It's fitting that to help spread information about the civil rights movement now, this memoir is also in graphic novel format.
This first volume begins in John Lewis’s childhood, where he lived on his parent’s farm and loved his chickens dearly. It then follows his college life, where he had his first meeting with Martin Luther King Jr. As John Lewis becomes part of the movement, the graphic novel widens its lens.
The information here is, of course, invaluable. Not only that, it’s just really well done. The art is also stunning. I’m in love with the tone and the curves and the line quality.
