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Nothing surprised me more, and meant more to me, than seeing an entire class of ninth graders mob Congressman [John] Lewis at a book festival.

Andrew Aydin

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Andrew Aydin
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More quotes by Andrew Aydin

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I think people who agree with Donald Trump have repeatedly made the case that he should be able to say whatever he wants to say, it's time someone did that. But as we go and speak to the kids, the young people who are reading March, we see the fear, we hear them tell us how scared they are.
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One of the biggest challenges for us is that people have different accounts. People say different things happened at different times, and when you're trying to sort through all that, how do you decide what's right?
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The parts of the [Civil Right] Movement we recognize so well now were not born from a single decision, but were a complicated and messy evolution of ideas and spirits, coming together after a long, hard struggle to triumph in moments when the odds seemed the longest.
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I think ['March'] is not just for the Black Lives Matter movement. It's for everyone. We all have to understand what happened then, so we can understand what's happening now.
Andrew Aydin
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People forget that many of the aspects of the Selma campaign were laid out in response to the church bombing in Birmingham.
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My father was a Muslim immigrant when Donald Trump started talking about banning Muslim immigrants from this country, I grew my beard out. My mother hated it. She never wanted me to look particularly Muslim. She thought if I grew my beard out that people would know, right? Don't make it hard for yourself. Don't let people know.
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In so many ways, forces unleashed in response to the Movement have come to dominate our politics, and technology is allowing the same injustices to be seen anew.
Andrew Aydin
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March was inspired by Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story. I actually first heard about that comic from John Lewis, who told me that it played an important role in the movement. And so once he told me about that, it made me start thinking, Well, why doesn't John Lewis write his own comic book?.
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If voting wasn't important, why would they be spending so much time and so much energy trying to stop you from doing it?
Andrew Aydin
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I hope March is a guide for today's activists. It took raw courage for young people to volunteer to go to Mississippi in the summer of 1964, and unrelenting faith in the power of democracy to organize such a massive campaign.
Andrew Aydin
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You have such a sacred responsibility when you touch John Lewis's story, when you touch the story of the movement. You don't want to leave anything out, but you want to tell a good story so the people will read it and they're engaged and they don't fall apart with extraneous details.
Andrew Aydin
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We were trying to show that you should be hopeful, you should be optimistic, but you have to be consistent and persistent, because it's not the struggle of a day, a week, a month, or a year. It's the struggle of a lifetime. And so you're going to have to put in 40 or 50 years to reach that high-water mark.
Andrew Aydin
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You cannot understand the politics of today without understanding the Civil Rights Movement and the role it played in our society.
Andrew Aydin
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We're [also] trying to talk to a generation who grew up on the Internet. They're digital natives, and, essentially, they speak through sequential storytelling. I mean, a good comic-book panel is not that much different than a meme.
Andrew Aydin
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So March: Book One was the first book I ever wrote. And it was the most terrifying process I've ever been through.
Andrew Aydin
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Most students graduate from high school knowing nine words about the civil rights movement: Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, and I Have a Dream. And that's it!
Andrew Aydin
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This generation is different. They are not as interested in chasing money or material possessions. I believe that this generation is more interested in seeking social change and a more just society than any generation since those that brought about the civil rights movement and the struggles for human dignity of the 1960s.
Andrew Aydin
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I think this ['March']is essential reading to understand the Black Lives Matter movement. I think it's also essential reading for the Black Lives Matter movement, so that they understand the political context that they're engaging in.
Andrew Aydin
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I went on to write my graduate thesis on the [Montgomery Story] comic book itself. It was the first long-form history that was ever written about it. And it's how I found out Martin Luther King actually helped edit Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story.
Andrew Aydin
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It's important to realize that the series actually grows with the reader. March: Book One is a great introduction for kids as young as eight or nine years old. But then they grow with the reader. Book Two is bigger, Book Three is even bigger. And they grow more violent and more confrontational.
Andrew Aydin