Rep. John Lewis — civil rights leader, gun legislation sit-in organizer, graphic novelist ... crowd surfer.
"Sometimes you have to find a way to get into trouble — good trouble, necessary trouble," Lewis said on a recent segment of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert shortly before diving off the stage, at Colbert's encouragement.
He appeared on the show to promote the third volume of his graphic novel March, that tells the story of the Civil Rights Movement and the famous march across the Edmund Pettus bridge in Selma, Ala. March: Book Three, the final installment, came out this month.
Lewis pointed to another small comic book, published in 1957 — Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story — that helped inspire his graphic series. "That little book became a road map — it's our hope that these books will become the road map for another generation," Lewis said.
On the dramatic sit-in for gun violence legislation earlier this summer, the Congressman was hopeful, despite the protest's ultimate failure to produce congressional action.
"We didn't get a vote to the floor but we helped educate and inspire ... people around this nation. They want us to do something. ...We've lost too many of our children," he said.
Lewis, 76, topped off his eloquence with a vigorous crowd surf — proof that his status as "inspiration for the youth" remains strong.
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