Tag: Rep. John Lewis

Looking Back | In Memory 2020

As we move into the new year, here is a look at some of the creators and editors who passed away in 2020.

We continue our series that looks back at the biggest news trends of 2020. Watch for more posts all this week.

In a year of losses, the passing of so many talented creators and editors hit especially hard. Here is a look at some of the comics people who passed away in 2020.

Ron Rogers, alongside a self-portrait (Courtesy of the Rogers Family)

Political cartoonist Ron Rogers died on January 20 at the age of 65. When he became the editorial cartoonist at the South Bend Tribune in the 2000s, he was generally regarded as the first Black editorial cartoonist at a daily newspaper. He was also the staff cartoonist for the Augusta Chronicle. Born in Richmond, Virginia, in 1954, Rogers started his cartooning career as a freelancer for The Richmond Afro-American and Planet in 1980.

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Reading for Resistance: What I Learned from ‘March’

Rep. John Lewis’s memoir of the Civil Rights movement is not ancient history. It’s the guidebook we need today.

I keep coming back to March.

It’s not something I thought would happen. It’s a good book, true, but now more than ever, it’s a necessary book.

It should not be necessary. We were supposed to be reading March, Rep. John Lewis’s memoir of the Civil Rights movement, as history. The final volume ends on a triumphant note, with the passage of the Voting Rights Act. When we closed the book, we were supposed to be closing the book on the terrible history of Jim Crow in America.

Except we haven’t. Before Lewis and his co-authors, Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell, were even finished with the third volume, the Supreme Court rolled back the protections of the Voting Rights Act. In preparation for the 2016 election, many states closed down registration sites, purged the voter rolls, restricted polling places and hours, and in the case of the North Carolina Republicans, actually sent out a press release bragging about suppressing black votes.

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