page_title: John Lewis
section_title: March
hierarchical_section_title: John Lewis / Biographies / March
caption_attribution_description: English: Civil rights leader and politician John Lewis at a November 7, 2013 book signing for March Book One, the first volume of his three-volume graphic novel autobiography, at Midtown Comics Downtown in Manhattan. This photo was created by Luigi Novi. It is not in the public domain, and use of this file outside of the licensing terms is a copyright violation. If you would like to use this image outside of the Wikimedia projects, you may do so, only if I am properly credited, either by linking the photograph to this page, or with an easily visible credit placed near the photo in each instance in which it is used. Please credit authorship as follows: &#160;© Luigi Novi / Wikimedia Commons. Please maintain the original file name in all uses. You can see a gallery of some of my other photos here. If you have any questions, you can contact me by sending me an email or leaving a note at the bottom of my Wikipedia talk page.
context_page_description: John Robert Lewis was an American statesman and civil rights leader who served in the United States House of Representatives for Georgia's 5th congressional district from 1987 until his death in 2020. He was the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee from 1963 to 1966.
  Lewis was one of the "Big Six" leaders of groups who organized the 1963 March on Washington. He fulfilled many key roles in the civil rights movement and its actions to end legalized racial segregation in the United States.
  In 1965, Lewis led the first of three Selma to Montgomery marches across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. In an incident which became known as Bloody Sunday, state troopers and police attacked the marchers, including Lewis.
  A member of the Democratic Party, Lewis was first elected to Congress in 1986 and served 17 terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. Due to his length of service, he became the dean of the Georgia congressional delegation. The district he represented included most of Atlanta.
  He was a leader of the Democratic Party in the U.S. House of Representatives, serving from 1991 as a Chief Deputy Whip and from 2003 as Senior Chief Deputy Whip.
context_section_description: In 2013, Lewis became the first member of Congress to write a graphic novel, with the launch of a trilogy titled March. The March trilogy is a black and white comics trilogy about the Civil Rights Movement, told through the perspective of civil rights leader and U.S. Congressman John Lewis. The first volume, March: Book One is written by Lewis and Andrew Aydin, illustrated and lettered by Nate Powell and was published in August 2013, the second volume, March: Book Two was published in January 2015 and the final volume, March: Book Three was published in August 2016.
  In an August 2014 interview, Lewis cited the influence of a 1958 comic book, Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story, on his decision to adapt his experience to the graphic novel format. March: Book One became a number one New York Times bestseller for graphic novels and spent more than a year on the lists.
  March: Book One received an "Author Honor" from the American Library Association's 2014 Coretta Scott King Book Awards, which honors an African American author of a children's book. Book One also became the first graphic novel to win a Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, receiving a "Special Recognition" bust in 2014.
  March: Book One was selected by first-year reading programs in 2014 at Michigan State University, Georgia State University, and Marquette University.
  March: Book Two was released in 2015 and immediately became both a New York Times and Washington Post bestseller for graphic novels.
  The release of March: Book Three in August 2016 brought all three volumes into the top 3 slots of the New York Times bestseller list for graphic novels for 6 consecutive weeks. The third volume was announced as the recipient of the 2017 Printz Award for excellence in young-adult literature, the Coretta Scott King Award, the YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction, the 2016 National Book Award in Young People's Literature, and the Sibert Medal at the American Library Association's annual Midwinter Meeting in January 2017.
  The March trilogy received the Carter G. Woodson Book Award in the Secondary (grades 7–12) category in 2017.
caption: Lewis signing copies of March Book One (2013), the first volume of his graphic novel autobiography, at Midtown Comics in Manhattan
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