WASHINGTON (AP) – A comic book about Martin Luther King Jr. helped bring a young John Lewis into the civil rights movement.
Fifty-years later, the Georgia Democratic congressman is hoping graphic novels about his life and what his contemporaries endured to win equal civil rights for all Americans will serve as a guide for protesters as they seek justice today.
“I see some of the same manners, some of the same thinking, on the part of young people today that I witnessed as a student,” said Lewis, a civil rights leader who was severely beaten in Alabama while marching for voting rights, as depicted in the movie “Selma.”
“The only thing that is so different is that I don’t think many of the young people have a deep understanding of the way of nonviolent direct action,” he said.
“March: Book Two,” the second volume in the trilogy of graphic novels chronicling Lewis’ life and the civil rights movement, was released this past week. It is published by Top Shelf, co-written by Lewis staffer Andrew Aydin and illustrated by Eisner Award-winning artist Nate Powell.