Civil Rights icon John Lewis recreates Selma march at Comic-Con
Amid the superheroes and villains at the Comic-Con International, civil rights icon and Congressman John Lewis, D-Georgia, cut an unusual figure.
Wearing the same trench coat he wore in 1965 during the march in Selma, Alabama across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, Lewis recreated a former version of himself on Saturday as he peacefully led children on a march through the San Diego Convention Center.
"It's important for all our young people to know what happened or how it happened so they too can bring about change using the philosophy of non-violence," Lewis told NBC 7.
Lewis also gave a speech on his novel series "March," a compilation of his experiences from the civil rights movement using civil rights heroics to retell the stories.
"The book is transformative," he said. "It's about social justice and my students are now firmly attached to the idea they they're going to change the world, and they will."
The congressman was one of the original planners of the 54-mile march from Selma to Montgomery to advocate the right to vote and "to dramatize to our nation and to the world our determination to win first-class citizenship," Lewis said in an exclusive interview with former "Face the Nation" host Bob Schieffer.
"I don't think as a group, we had any idea that our marching feet across that bridge would have such an impact 50 years later. If it hadn't been for that march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Bloody Sunday, there would be no Barack Obama as president of the United States of America," Lewis added later in the interview.
The reenactment of the march came just a few weeks after the Charleston massacre in South Carolina and one day after the Confederate flag was removed entirely from the South Carolina Statehouse Friday.