So March: Book One was the first book I ever wrote. And it was the most terrifying process I've ever been through.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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?".

We chose to frame "March" around the inauguration of Barack Obama because it was such an important moment in the story of the Civil Rights Movement. It wasn't the fulfillment of Dr. [Martin Luther] King's dream, but it was a major down payment.