SAM Will Stream Sold Out John Lewis Appearance In Seattle

SEATTLE, WA - Civil rights icon and U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Atlanta, will appear at Benaroya Hall on Wednesday, and the Seattle Art Museum will live-stream the sold-out event online.

Lewis will be in Seattle to talk about his new graphic novel trilogy "MARCH," which retells the civil rights struggle through his perspective. The graphic novels, which Lewis created with writer Andrew Aydin and artist Nate Powell, recently won a National Book Award.

The Benaroya Hall talk featuring Lewis begins at 7 p.m. Wednesday. That event is sold out, but SAM will simulcast the event for free inside the Plestcheeff Auditorium. In case that space fills up, SAM will also live-stream Lewis' talk online here.

Lewis, who represents the Atlanta area in Congress, was recently involved in a Twitter spat with President Donald Trump. Trump called Lewis "all talk" after Lewis criticized the president over his negative descriptions of urban areas in the U.S.

During a civil rights march in Selma, Ala., in 1965, Lewis sustained a skull fracture after being brutally beaten by Alabama state police. That was one of a number of times Lewis would endure physical violence during the civil rights era: he was beaten in North Carolina for trying to use a whites-only restroom; and a bus he rode as a member of the Freedom Riders was firebombed by the Ku Klux Klan, also in Alabama.

SAM is presenting Lewis' talk in conjunction with its exhibit "Jacob Lawrence: The Migration Series," which chronicles the migration of African-Americans from the rural south to industrial cities in the north and west. SAM is hosting all 60 of Lawrence's paintings depicting that exodus.

Image via U.S. Rep. John Lewis