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.

If voting wasn't important, why would they be spending so much time and so much energy trying to stop you from doing it?

I went on to write my graduate thesis on the ["Montgomery Story"] comic book itself. It was the first long-form history that was ever written about it. And it's how I found out Martin Luther King actually helped edit "Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story."

The parts of the [Civil Right] Movement we recognize so well now were not born from a single decision, but were a complicated and messy evolution of ideas and spirits, coming together after a long, hard struggle to triumph in moments when the odds seemed the longest.

Nothing surprised me more, and meant more to me, than seeing an entire class of ninth graders mob Congressman [John] Lewis at a book festival.

I spent 10 years in professional politics and eight writing comics, and so I look at it from both sides. I don't understand the logic in being frustrated with a system, so you choose to be a part of the reason why the system is so frustrating. If everybody voted, it wouldn't be this way.

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.