March: Book One

by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, Nate Powell (Illustrator)

Overview

#1 New York Times Bestseller

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781603093002
Publisher:	IDW Publishing
Publication date:	08/13/2013
Series:	March , #1
Pages:	128
Sales rank:	13,271
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.40(h) x 0.70(d)
Lexile:	GN760L (what's this?)
Age Range:	13 - 16 Years

About the Author

Congressman John Lewis was a leader in the American Civil Rights Movement. He was chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and played a key role in the struggle to end segregation. Despite more than 40 arrests, physical attacks, and serious injuries, John Lewis remained a devoted advocate of the philosophy of nonviolence. He is co-author of the first comics work to ever win the National Book Award, the #1 New York Times bestselling graphic novel memoir trilogy MARCH, written with Andrew Aydin and illustrated by Nate Powell. He is also the recipient of numerous awards from national and international institutions including the Lincoln Medal, the John F. Kennedy "Profile in Courage" Lifetime Achievement Award, and the NAACP Spingarn Medal, among many others. He lives in Atlanta, GA.

Andrew Aydin is creator and co-author of the #1 New York Times best-selling graphic memoir series, MARCH. Co-authored with Rep. Lewis and illustrated by Nate Powell, MARCH is the first comics work to ever win the National Book Award, and is a recipient of the Will Eisner Comics Industry Award, the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award Special Recognition, and the Coretta Scott King Book Award Author Honor, among other honors. Aydin's other comics work includes writing the X-Files Annual 2016 (IDW), writing for the CBLDF Liberty Annual 2016 (Image), and writing an upcoming issue of Bitch Planet (Image).

Nate Powell is a New York Times best-selling graphic novelist born in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1978. He began self-publishing at age 14, and graduated from School of Visual Arts in 2000. His work includes MARCH, You Don't Say, Any Empire, Swallow Me Whole, The Silence Of Our Friends, The Year Of The Beasts, and Rick Riordan's The Lost Hero. Powell is the first and only cartoonist ever to win the National Book Award. Powell has discussed his work at the United Nations, as well as on MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show and CNN.

What People are Saying About This

President Bill Clinton

Congressman John Lewis has been a resounding moral voice in the quest for equality for more than 50 years, and I'm so pleased that he is sharing his memories of the Civil Rights Movement with America's young leaders. In March, he brings a whole new generation with him across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, from a past of clenched fists into a future of outstretched hands. -- President Bill Clinton

Editorial Reviews

Long before the advent of the "graphic novel," the occasional comic book focused on the feats of more tangible superheroes. Perhaps the most famous example came in 1958, when a pacifist organization called the Fellowship of Reconciliation published a single-issue comic about the up-and-coming leader of the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott. Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story explained the tenets of nonviolent action that had guided the yearlong boycott, which led to the desegregation of the Alabama city's public bus system; it sold more than 250,000 copies and influenced young activists working to desegregate the Jim Crow South. That comic book is read by the characters in the powerful graphic novel March, which tells the story of the civil rights movement from the perspective of another one of its icons, Georgia congressman John Lewis.

March has been planned as a trilogy, and the release of its first volume takes place on the eve of the fiftieth anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Of all who spoke in front of the Lincoln Memorial on that summer day in 1963 — most famously King, who delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech — only Lewis is still alive, making this project, intended for young adult readers, feel all the more vital.

March was co-written by Lewis and one of his congressional staffers, Andrew Aydin (the narrative also draws from Lewis's 1998 memoir, Walking with the Wind); the artwork is by Nate Powell, winner of the Eisner Award for Swallow Me Whole. The book opens on the morning of Barack Obama's first inauguration. Lewis has stopped by his Capitol Hill office on his way to the event, and there he encounters some constituents, an African-American mother and her two young sons; the story's point of view shuttles back and forth in time as Lewis tells the boys about his childhood and the early years of civil rights while preparing to attend the inauguration of the country's first African- American president.

Powell's artwork — dynamic and richly expressive — is particularly evocative when he depicts Lewis's childhood in rural Alabama, where his solicitous concern for his family's chickens presaged his later interest in social justice. A formative summer spent with aunts and uncles in an integrated neighborhood of Buffalo contributed to Lewis's growing awareness of the iniquities of the South, where, in stark contrast to white children, he carried hand- me-down textbooks onto a rickety school bus that traveled unpaved roads to an ugly, cinder-block schoolhouse. "After that trip," Lewis writes, "home never felt the same, and neither did I." Still, he thrived in school, even while he was increasingly politicized by the events — the Supreme Court's Brown vs. Board of Education decision, the murder of Emmett Till, the Montgomery boycott — that gripped the region.

He left Alabama to attend the American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville; there, through his church, Lewis underwent thorough instruction in the principles and practice of nonviolent resistance in preparation for sit-ins to desegregate stores and lunch counters downtown. March devotes many pages to the extensive training that preceded these demonstrations: activists studied the teachings of Gandhi, role-played by hurling racial epithets at each other, and learned how to position themselves during beatings. Rosa Parks is more often remembered as a tired seamstress than as an NAACP activist who knew that the organization was looking for a plaintiff to test the constitutionality of segregation on public buses. In a similar vein, March provides a potent reminder that the sit-ins, far from being casually assembled, were well-coordinated, disciplined events informed by a rigorous philosophy.

Though the trilogy is named for the pivotal 1965 marches from Selma to Montgomery, the first volume leaves off in Nashville, still early in Lewis's activist career. At book's end, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which Lewis would eventually chair, is being formed. There are hints of the violence to come, just as there are hints of the fissures within the movement, felt especially by younger activists like Lewis, who regarded his elders as too conservative. ("Our revolt was as much against the traditional black leadership structure as it was against segregation and discrimination," he writes.) Powell's black-and-white depictions of these tensions are striking, whether he portrays the brutality of a beating or the close-up furrowing of a brow.

Meanwhile, the 1958 MLK comic book cited in March has lived on: it was recently translated into Arabic by an Egyptian activist promoting civil disobedience during the Arab Spring. March, dedicated to "the past and future children of the movement," is also likely to prove inspirational to readers for years to come. When Congressman Lewis promoted his graphic novel at Comic-Con in 2013 — clad in a suit and tie, among the fanboys dressed as their favorite superhero and sci-fi characters — he was an unexpected hit.

Barbara Spindel has covered books for Time Out New York, Newsweek.com, Details, and Spin. She holds a Ph.D. in American Studies.

Reviewer: Barbara Spindel

Lewis sees no need to overdramatize his thoughts and actions; he knows that he and the fellow participants in the march from which this book takes its title were committing brave acts of civil disobedience during an era that is absent from the memories of many young Americans. This lends March its educational value even as Powell's drawings give Lewis's crisp narration an emotional power.

The New York Times Book Review - Ken Tucker

The long-overdue move to chronicle American history in graphic novel form takes another great step forward with this first volume of a projected history of the civil rights struggle. Instead of taking an all-inclusive, Eyes on the Prize–style approach (an epic undertaking that hopefully is on another artist’s to-do list), March is told from the perspective of Georgia congressman John Lewis. Listed here as coauthor with Andrew Aydin, Lewis frames his story as a flashback told to a few inquisitive visitors in his Washington office as he is getting ready to attend the inauguration of President Barack Obama. It’s an occasionally creaky device that slips sometimes into hagiography, but Lewis’s tale is a resolutely dramatic one regardless. Highlighted by dark, neo-noirish art from Nate Powell (The Silence of Our Friends), March tracks Lewis from his hardscrabble childhood on a remote Georgia farm to his gradual awakening to the pernicious evil of segregation and his growing leadership role in Martin Luther King Jr.’s nonviolent resistance movement. If the book strays too far from Lewis himself at times, that’s because the momentousness of what’s happening around him cannot be ignored. Superbly told history. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

"Brave acts of civil disobedience... [give] March its educational value even as Powell's drawings give Lewis's crisp narration an emotional power."— The New York Times

"A riveting and beautiful civil-rights story… Lewis's gripping memoir should be stocked in every school and shelved at every library." — The Washington Post

"Essential reading... March is a moving and important achievement... the story of a true American superhero." — USA Today

From the Publisher

Comics artist Powell (The Silence of Our Friends; Swallow Me Whole) blogged that Congressman Lewis (Representative for the 5th U.S. Congressional Dist. of Georgia since 1986) "is the sole surviving member of the 'Big Six' of the Civil Rights movement, [and]…was integral in the historic marches from Selma to Montgomery, and generally helped smack institutionalized white supremacy in the nuts and changed the face of 20th century American Society." Growing up in the 1940s, Lewis rode a school bus down dirt roads because roads into "colored" communities weren't paved. Sixty years later, he was a guest of honor at Barack Obama's inauguration. Lewis's remarkable life has been skillfully translated into graphics with the assistance of writer Aydin, a staffer in Lewis's office and his capable Boswell. The art from Eisner and Ignatz Prize winner Powell is perfect for the story, ranging as it does from moody ink-wash to hand-drawn lettering. VERDICT Segregation's insult to personhood comes across here with a visual, visceral punch. Suitable for tweens through teens and adults, this version of Lewis's life story belongs in libraries to teach readers about the heroes of America. Two more volumes are forthcoming, and a teacher's guide is available.—M.C.

Library Journal

★ 09/01/2013
Gr 8 Up—Beginning with a dream sequence that depicts the police crackdown on the 1965 Selma-Montgomery March, this memoir then cuts to Congressman John Lewis's preparations on the day of President Obama's inauguration. Lewis provides perspective on the occasion, explaining and describing his own religious and desegregationalist origins in Alabama, his early meeting with Dr. King, and his training as a nonviolent protester. The bulk of the narrative centers around the lunch counter sit-ins in 1959 and 1960 and ends on the hopeful note of a public statement by Nashville Mayor West. The narration feels very much like a fascinating firsthand anecdote and, despite a plethora of personal details and unfamiliar names, it never drags. Even with the contemporary perspective, the events never feel like a foregone conclusion, making the stakes significant and the work important. The narration particularly emphasizes the nonviolent aspect of the movement and the labor involved in maintaining that ideal. The artwork is full of lush blacks and liquid brushstrokes and features both small period details and vast, sweeping vistas that evoke both the reality of the setting and the importance of the events. This is superb visual storytelling that establishes a convincing, definitive record of a key eyewitness to significant social change, and that leaves readers demanding the second volume.—Benjamin Russell, Belmont High School, NH

School Library Journal

Eisner winner Powell's dramatic black-and-white graphic art ratchets up the intensity in this autobiographical opener by a major figure in the civil rights movement. In this first of a projected trilogy, Lewis, one of the original Freedom Riders and currently in his 13th term as a U.S. Representative, recalls his early years--from raising (and preaching to) chickens on an Alabama farm to meeting Martin Luther King Jr. and joining lunch-counter sit-ins in Nashville in 1960. The account flashes back and forth between a conversation with two young visitors in Lewis' congressional office just prior to Barack Obama's 2009 inauguration and events five or more decades ago. His education in nonviolence forms the central theme, and both in his frank, self-effacing accounts of rising tides of protest being met with increasingly violent responses and in Powell's dark, cinematically angled and sequenced panels, the heroism of those who sat and marched and bore the abuse comes through with vivid, inspiring clarity. The volume closes with the founding of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (which Lewis went on to chair), and its publication is scheduled to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, at which Lewis preceded Dr. King on the podium: "Of everyone who spoke at the march, I'm the only one who's still around." A powerful tale of courage and principle igniting sweeping social change, told by a strong-minded, uniquely qualified eyewitness. (Graphic memoir. 11-15)

Kirkus Reviews

Probably the most important graphic novel release of the year.

Mental Floss

When a graphic novel tries to interest young readers in an important topic, it often feels forced. Not so with the exhilarating March: Book One... Powerful words and pictures.

The Boston Globe

A riveting and beautiful civil-rights story… Lewis's gripping memoir should be stocked in every school and shelved at every library.

The Washington Post

Dazzling... a grand work. (starred review)

Booklist

Essential reading for just about anyone... March is a moving and important achievement. While it looks a little different than your average comic, it does tell the story of a true American superhero.

USA Today

An astonishingly accomplished graphic memoir that brings to life a vivid portrait of the civil rights era, Lewis' extraordinary history and accomplishments, and the movement he helped lead... its power, accessibility and artistry destine it for awards, and a well-deserved place at the pinnacle of the comics canon." — NPR
"March offers a poignant portrait of an iconic figure that both entertains and edifies, and deserves to be placed alongside other historical graphic memoirs like Persepolis and Maus.

Entertainment Weekly