My Hero: Martin Luther King

My epic hero is Martin Luther King Jr. As most of us know he was an known as an civil rights leader and activist who once had a huge impact on african american culture in the 1950s threw the 60s. A Lot of people looked up to him as an laid back no violence peace maker. Most of the older people was with the non violence so they was along with all of his protest/rallies.

A hero is somebody who commits to an act of some type bravery or who has shown an admirable quality such as great courage or braveness or even strength of a some kind of character. (Encarta, 2009) Joseph Campbell has come up with eight kinds of characteristics of a hero. Joseph Campbell is known as a scholar of mythology. There are multiple people in our times that are considered to be a hero.

It doesn’t matter if these heroes are fictional or nonfiction they all portray some sort of heroic abilities. Dr Martin Luther King Jr is one the most heroic figures of most of the older people time. According to Joseph Campbell’s characteristics Dr. Martin Luther King Jr has a characteristic of a hero such as a hero because of all of the remarkable things he has done and impacted some many areas/tackled so many obstacles. African americans really liked that.

He didn’t like that the separation amongst black and white was occurring he wanted people to be equal and treated the same. Dr Martin Luther King knew that he was at a high risk of being killed because of the things and said and the hate that he received from whites. He knew that a lot of people looked at his opinions as wrong and bias and didn’t agree with him. In other words the officers in this time would retaliate by taking water hoses out and pointing them toward African Americans and the water was so strong it pushed them into the wall hard. Many black people died from this type of action that occurred in this time. Dr King still still had an goal to make this country as equal as possible. Dr King had a strong desire/passion to help young black men, women and children be able to associate themselves with the other race…young white, women, men and children. Dr King led marches made speeches and also attend churches which eventually led to his death. He was killed on a balcony on the second floor of a motel in Memphis Tennessee. The bullet went through his shoulder. He knew what the outcome was going to be and still set out to fight for equal rights and freedom. Dr Martin Luther King most definitely gave his life to something much bigger which is known as our Lord and Savior which he loved. He has played an magnificent roll down on earth and then walked through heavens gates to watch over us and to c how his work too effect. He went out of his way for his family and the rest of the world to make sure everybody was equal and successful.

Works Cited

1. Encarta Dictionary. (2009). Hero. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20091004012347/http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_/hero.html
2. Campbell, J. (1949). The Hero with a Thousand Faces. New York: Pantheon Books.
3. The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute. (n.d.). Biography of Martin Luther King Jr. Retrieved from https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/biography-martin-luther-king-jr
4. Garrow, D. J. (1986). Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. New York: HarperCollins.
5. Fairclough, A. (2001). To Redeem the Soul of America: The Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Martin Luther King Jr. Athens: University of Georgia Press.
6. Branch, T. (1988). Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63. New York: Simon & Schuster.
7. Carson, C. (1991). The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. New York: Warner Books.
8. The King Center. (n.d.). Chronology. Retrieved from https://thekingcenter.org/chronology/
9. Harding, V. (2009). Martin Luther King: The Inconvenient Hero. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.
10. Clayborne Carson, P., Garrow, D. J., & Shepard, K. (Eds.). (1998). The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr. Berkeley: University of California Press.