Volume 2 covered the following events-
Having successfully participated in a boycott protesting Nashville restaurants refusing to serve black customers, Lewis turns his sights to other cities before planning on joining a Quaker relief organization in India.
In 1961, a group calling themselves 'The Freedom Riders' plan on travelling from Washington DC to Louisiana, protesting the Federal Government's refusal to enact a Supreme Court ruling that called segregated interstate travel by bus to be unconstitutional. Lewis joins CORE as one of 13 black and white riders. During the initial trip, the Freedom Riders were assaulted by the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama. Lewis is beaten unconscious and sent back to Tennessee to recover.
While recuperating, the bus is firebombed and CORE ends their freedom ride plans.
Forgoing his mission trip to India, Lewis instead works with other college students in another series of Freedom Rides. Lewis is arrested several times, including a stint towards the end of 1962 that will inspire Dr. Martin Luther King to participate. The following year, King will be arrested in Alabama where he will write his 'Letter From a Birmingham Jail', a response to criticism that King and others allowed themselves to remain unjustly imprisoned rather than posting bail.
After the relative success of these second rounds of protest rides, Lewis was elected president of the SNCC- the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee, in 1963. As a result of his new status, Lewis is invited to participate in a massive march planned to be held in Washington, D.C.. This new role puts John Lewis shoulder to shoulder with several prominent civil rights leaders, including NAACP leader Roy Wilkins and Dr. King. The march would be held in August with John Lewis being the youngest keynote speaker and the last to talk before King delivers his iconic 'I Have A Dream' speech.
The volume ends with the tragic youth Sunday bombing of the 16th Street Church in Birmingham.
Returning to the 2015 march reenactment in San Diego. Rep. Lewis marched throughout the San Diego Convention Center hand-in-hand with hundreds of kids. According to March co-writer (and Lewis congressional aid) Andrew Aydin, John Lewis wanted to show comic book loving youth that not all superheroes wear capes or have superpowers.
To properly recreate his 1965 march cosplay, John Lewis wore a tan overcoat with a backpack, just as he did when Lewis led about 600 people across the Edmund Pettis Bridge. John Lewis wanted to make sure for this anniversary event that his backpack contained everything the original had with him during the protest. Those items were 2 books, a toothbrush, toothpaste, an apple and an orange. According to Aydin, only the orange was missing to complete the ensemble.
John Lewis earned a lot of fans during his 2015 Comic-Con activity. Not as many admirers as he did throughout his life as first a civil rights leader and later as a representative of the people of Georgia's 5th District. But thanks to this event and his graphic novel memoirs, John Lewis reintroduced himself to a new generation.
Book Three of March would be released in 2016 with a deluxe trilogy box set available the following year. Artwork for the trilogy was by Nate Powell. Lewis and Aydin would later publish a sequel called Run, detailing Lewis' life and career after the passage of the 1965 Civil Rights Act.
John Lewis passed away in 2020 at the age of 80; a year before Run would debut in stores.
Completing this review completes Task #40 (Set in the 1960s) of the 2023 Comic Book and Graphic Novel Reading Challenge.
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