March, Book One tells the story of John Lewis' childhood in the segregated south, his formative meeting with Martin Luther King, Jr., and the organization of the Nashville Student Movement, and its fight to integrate lunch counters.
Representative John Lewis serves Georgia's 5th congressional district. He’s the co-author, along with staffer Andrew Aydin, of the comic book March, Book One. Lewis and Aydin were at Marquette, where Lewis was awarded an honorary degree.
The book was required reading for incoming freshmen at Marquette University. In the coming days, students and faculty will discuss the lessons in that book.
When Lewis and Aydin were at Marquette in August of 2014, they sat down with Lake Effect’s Mitch Teich. Congressman Lewis put the events in Ferguson in the context of his own experience in the civil rights movement.
“When I observe and read about what is happening in Missouri…I said to myself, ‘Oh I thought those days were behind us.’ I thought we had come much farther along, but we’re not there yet. On one hand I wish I could be there to try to teach some of the young people the way of peace, the way of love, the way of non-violence,” Lewis said.
The third book in the series of graphic novels, drawn by Nate Powell, is called March: Book 3, and won the 2016 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature.
This piece was originally published August 21, 2014.
