Role models and their influence on personal development

¶ … Martin Luther King, Jr. is my Role Model

When searching for role models, it is difficult to imagine a more inspiring person than Martin Luther King, Jr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a moral leader and one that more- in a perfect world - people should strive to be like. I, for one, would like to have the courage and bravery to be more like King when it comes to motivation and caring for the well being of others. There are few men in history (except for perhaps Jesus and Gandhi, two of King's own role models) who have the fearlessness and the motivation to help people like King did. Because of those reasons, King is my role model.

Many people have a peripheral understanding of King. Two generations removed from the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, it is difficult to understand the depth of his achievement. However, the late 1950s and early 1960s were a time of great civil and political unrest. Black Americans were prepared to conclude their struggle for civil rights, and many leaders advocated rights by any means necessary. While modern Americans associate King with the Civil Rights Movement, the reality is that, at that time, the movement could have turned violent at any moment. King may be the reason that the Civil Rights Movement remained peaceful. King worked hard to challenge racial segregation and he did so with intelligence and wit, motivation, passion, and nonviolence. He was a great organizer of events as well as a leader of those events; he organized some of the biggest protests -- all non-violent (which was something in which he firmly believed). There were many organizations that he raised funds for and he often worked as an alliance coordinator.

One of the most remarkable aspects of King was his keen emotional intelligence. Had he decided to lead a violent movement, he would have been playing into hundreds of years of stereotypes of the dangerous black. Though such a revolution may have been successful, it would have undoubtedly ended in hundreds, if not thousands, of deaths for both blacks and whites. Instead, King had an acute social awareness. He seemed to instinctively understand that, while many people were revolted by the innate violence and hatred in a system of segregation, they still feared the potential violence of a Civil Rights Movement. Therefore, King worked hard to ensure that his followers would remain peaceful, at all costs. This acute emotional intelligence was very helpful in his movement. When images of the police using fire hoses and police dogs against children were played nationwide, it helped sway the sympathies of many who had previously believed that segregation was a relatively harmless institution. Had those blacks been attackers rather than victims, the national sentiment would not have been in their favor.