Run: Book One

Run: Book One (2021) is a graphic memoir by the civil rights activist and US Congressman John Lewis, coauthored by his longtime aide Andrew Aydin, with illustrations by L. Fury and Nate Powell. It continues the story that Lewis (also with Aydin as coauthor and Powell as illustrator) told in the three-volume graphic memoir March (published between 2013 and 2016). March was a publishing sensation, earning widespread praise and becoming the first work of graphic literature to win the prestigious National Book Award (for the third volume). Run was also well received, earning its place on the New York Times’s top five books for young adults, Amazon’s best history books, and the Eisner Award for Best Graphic Memoir. The title potentially references Lewis’s eventual decision to transition from activism to politics, culminating in his successful 1986 run for Congress in Georgia’s 5th district. However, Lewis’s death in 2020 left this first volume of Run as the last completed text, calling into question whether the story will continue in this specific form.

This study guide refers to the 2021 hardcover edition by Abrams ComicArts.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide contain vivid descriptions of racism and racist violence.

Summary

Run picks up almost immediately where March left off, with the signing of the Voting Rights Act in August 1965. Within days of that signature law’s passing, Lewis is still fighting to register Black voters (primarily in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi) in counties that remain under the control of an all-white power structure, often allied with violent extremists like the Ku Klux Klan. At that same time, in the Watts area of Los Angeles, a violent encounter between police and a Black motorist escalates into six days of deadly riots, signaling a shift in the focus of the civil rights movement from voting rights to broader structural forces holding down all Black Americans, not just those living in Jim Crow states. Lewis, as chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), remains focused on registering voters in places like Lowndes County, Alabama, where Black people are 80% of the electorate, and yet are not registered. Police and white citizens react violently to these efforts, leading to the killing of some protestors. In response, the SNCC decides that some of its leaders, especially Julian Bond, will run for political office as Democrats, hoping to push out the segregationist “Dixiecrats.” These political efforts are complicated by the Vietnam War’s escalation, with some calling for protests and others calling for restraint, given President Johnson’s strong support of civil rights. As violence against Black people continues, both in Vietnam and America, Lewis boldly chooses to urge young Americans to protest both racial injustice and the military draft, which was sending hundreds of thousands of young men (disproportionately Black) to Vietnam. When Julian Bond supports this statement, he is barred from taking his newly-won seat in the Georgia Assembly.

As Lewis explores the connections between civil rights at home and US foreign policy, his efforts again focus on Lowndes County. Although a surge in Black voters fails to dislodge the segregationist candidate, it nonetheless signals an emerging source of political power. In response, Stokely Carmichael challenges Lewis for leadership of SLCC, advocating for shifting away from its commitment to nonviolence and instead emphasizing Black Power. After Lewis wins the initial vote, Carmichael uses parliamentary trickery to oust Lewis. Other civil rights organizations criticize the shift. Lewis echoes their sentiments but still finds himself cast adrift without a clear sense of how to move forward. Still only 26 years old, with no family or sense of identity within the redefined movement, he moves to a new city and starts anew.