US congressman wins Eisner award for graphic memoir of civil rights struggle

Second volume of pioneering campaigner John Lewis’s autobiographical story, March: Book Two, wins one of the genre’s leading honours

Awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama five years ago, the civil rights pioneer John Lewis was presented with a rather different sort of honour in San Diego this weekend: an Eisner award for the second volume in his graphic novel memoir, March.

Tracing the story of how the US congressman became a central figure in the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, March: Book Two won the prestigious Eisner prize for best reality-based work. Illustrated by Nate Powell and co-written with Andrew Aydin, the first two books in the series have topped the New York Times bestseller lists and won plaudits from luminaries including Bill Clinton, who called Lewis “a resounding moral voice in the quest for equality for more than 50 years”.

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