In Conversation: The Life & Legacy of Congressman John Lewis

Russell Motley teaches broadcast journalism at Florida Memorial University. He joined FMU in 2010 following a 20-year career as a local TV news anchor and reporter. He earned a master’s degree in communications from Florida A&M University (FAMU). While at FAMU, he researched how African Americans have been portrayed throughout the history of Super Bowl commercials.

Congresswoman Frederica S. Wilson represents Florida’s 24th Congressional District. It is one of the most ethnically and culturally diverse districts in the nation, and includes parts of northwest Miami-Dade and southern Broward counties. She was elected to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2010 and currently serves on the Transportation and Infrastructure and Education and Labor committees, and is the chair of the Education and Labor Committee’s Health, Higher Education and Workforce Investment Subcommittee. Her tenure in Congress, now in its sixth term, has been marked by her signature spirit of unrelenting advocacy on behalf of the less fortunate. Legislative priorities include job creation, improving education, ending gun violence, voting rights and empowerment, safeguarding access to health care and the social safety net, protecting unions and multiemployer pensions in peril, and other key issues that impact communities of color. In the 117th Congress, Rep. Wilson passed the landmark Commission on the Social Status of Black Men and Boys Act, which will put in place this year a bipartisan commission to address disparities in society, education, economic, health, and criminal, and other areas that have for generations plagued this population and create policy solutions to address them. As a former elementary school principal, community leader, school board member, state legislator, and founder of the 5000 Role Models of Excellence Project – an in-school dropout prevention program – Wilson has developed a well-earned reputation as a “Voice for the Voiceless.”

Andrew Aydin is the creator and co-author of New York Times bestselling March series – the first comics work to ever win the National Book Award – and has written for comics such as Bitch Planet and X-Files, as well as for Teaching Tolerance Magazine and Creative Loafing. Run: Book One (Abrams ComicArts) is the first installment of a powerful new graphic novel series focusing on the struggle for civil rights and the personal story of late Congressman John Lewis (2/21/40 – 7/17/20). To Lewis, the civil rights movement came to an end with the Voting Rights Act in 1965. But that was after more than five years as one of its preeminent figures, leading sit-in protests and fighting segregation on interstate busways as an original Freedom Rider. His extraordinary work included helping organize the Mississippi Freedom Summer and co-leading the march from Selma to Montgomery on what became known as “Bloody Sunday.” Lewis knew that victories are just the beginning, not the end, of a struggle. Politician, voting rights activist, and author Stacey Abrams noted that “Run recounts the lost history of what too often follows dramatic change – the pushback of those who refuse it and the resistance of those who believe change has not gone far enough. … Run gives vivid, energetic voice to a chapter of transformation in his young, already extraordinary life.”