John Lewis, the civil rights icon and longtime representative called the "conscience of the Congress," died on Friday at age 80. A speaker at the 1963 March on Washington, one of the first Freedom Riders, and a founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, he was best known as the leader of the voting rights march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., on March 7, 1965, when he was brutally beaten by state troopers--a scene repeated on television that helped passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into law several months later.
He told his story and the history of the civil rights movement in several books, including Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement (1998), Across That Bridge: Life Lessons and a Vision for Change (2012), Wake Up America 1960-1963 with Andrew Aydin (2015), Civil Rights and the Promise of Equality (2015) and Run: Book One with Andrew Aydin (2018). The most enduring and powerful of his books was the series March, done in graphic novel form, with Andrew Aydin, illustrated by Nate Powell and published by Top Shelf Productions. In 2016, March: Book Three became the first graphic novel to receive a National Book Award. The entire trilogy is available as a slipcased set ($49.99).
