Congressman John Lewis can now add another accolade to his long and distinguished civil rights/political career. He has won a National Book Award.
U.S. Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) won the Young People’s Literature award with his co-writer Andrew Aydin and artist Nate Powell for “March: Book Three.” The widely celebrated graphic novel recounts Lewis’s experience during the civil rights movement.
Lewis told the ecstatic crowd, “Some of you know I grew up in rural Alabama — very, very poor with very few books in our home.” Forcing back tears, he recalled walking to a local public library with his siblings to get a library card and being turned away because the library was for whites only. [SOURCE]
Other winners were:
Colson Whithead: Fiction: “The Underground Railroad”
Ibram X. Kendi: Non Fiction: “Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America”
Daniel Borzutzky Poetry: “The Performance of Becoming Human.”
READ THE WINNERS!