He would even gather the birds around so that he could preach sermons to the flock. From an early age Lewis carried an activist spark within, fomenting relationships with the chickens on his parent’s farm, caring for them as individuals, eventually “seriously protesting” his parents treatment of the birds as fodder for the dinner table. They laid low making no waves, fearing the very real and brutal reprisals that could be visited upon them should they dare to transgress the social order. His sharecropper parents owned their own farm, enjoying a basically stable life, though living with constant fear under the repressive and demeaning Jim Crow laws of the region. Lewis and his co-writer, congressional staffer Andrew Aydin (who convinced Lewis to present his narrative in the comics format), keep the proceedings simple and linear.Ĭongressman Lewis was born in 1940 in Pike County, Alabama. Though March deals with important, weighty themes, it never feels didactic, remaining immediate and engrossing throughout. He recently told an interviewer that this humble comic was “like a Bible” for him and his fellow activists back then, an indispensable tool for learning how to implement non-violent activism and protest techniques such as passive resistance and sit-ins. As a teenager himself, Lewis drew great inspiration from a ten-cent comic book called Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story, published in 1956. Presenting the story in the form of a graphic novel makes it that much more accessible and immediate for the targeted YA audience March is a showcase example of the power of the comics medium as an educational tool. Lewis is an iconic figure in the struggle for civil rights for African-Americans, and that struggle is the broader subject of his story – as is the resiliency and courage it takes to effect large-scale social change and correct injustices. March: Book One is the memoir of Congressman John Lewis (District 5, Georgia) who has had a long and distinguished political career.

March john lewis graphic novel