Click to entry Comic-Book-1957.pdf
[Editor’s note: we post this every year on Martin Luther King Day.]
This slim comedian from 1957, Martin Luther King and The Montgomery Story, is credited with inspiring many to tackle peaceful protest as a way to attaining civil rights for all with its story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Most famously, a younger John Lewis learn it and recalling the facility it had, impressed him to adapt his life story into the March Trilogy.
The comedian, printed by the Fellowship for Reconciliation, was written by pacifist Alfred Hassler and drawn by an unnamed artist*** within the Al Capp studio; it’s been translated into a number of different languages and in 2011 used as a device in Egyptian protests. The preliminary print run was 250,000 copies, which supplies you an concept of the facility of the comics medium of the time.
Andrew Aydin, co-author of March, wrote his masters thesis in regards to the historical past of this comedian, and that thesis was tailored for this text at Creative Loafing.
I first heard in regards to the civil rights-era comedian ebook Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story from Congressman John Lewis within the spring of 2008. I had been working for him lower than a 12 months after I was driving him to an occasion and we received to speaking about comedian books. I keep in mind Lewis sitting within the entrance passenger seat as he gently teased me about attending Atlanta’s comedian conference Dragon Con. But then he mentioned, “You know, there was a comic book during the movement. It was very influential.” I used to be captivated. Could a comic book ebook have performed a task within the Civil Rights Movement? If so, how? Could we do it once more?
Its message remains to be robust.
***Update: Since final 12 months, James Romberger made a significant discovery in comics scholarship by figuring out Sy Barry because the artist on this ebook.
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