by Brad Meltzer
Today there is a phrase for it: political suicide.
It’s what happens when you say something that most people disagree with.
In 1858, while Abraham Lincoln was trying to get elected to the United States Senate, Stephen Douglas represented “most people.”
Douglas said that blacks had no rights.
He said that the promise of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness did not apply to them.
The Supreme Court of the United States agreed.
But Abraham Lincoln didn’t.
Lincoln stood up.
Lincoln spoke his mind.
And Lincoln lost.
He was sent home with nothing.
It was political suicide.
But it was worth it. *
I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.
—Abraham Lincoln
—RECORD BREAKER—
andy miyares
Special Olympics swimmer.
Born with Down’s syndrome, Andy Miyares has used the water as a place to train his muscles and his mind. As a Special Olympics swimmer, he is unstoppable.
Andy Miyares was born with Down’s syndrome.
At nine months old, because of a lack of muscle control, he couldn’t sit up, and he couldn’t crawl.
But his parents had an idea—swimming.
The doctors said Andy wouldn’t walk until he was three years old.
He proved them wrong at thirteen months.
He learned math by counting laps.
Social skills from competing in meets.
At eight, he entered Special Olympics.
At twenty-one, he swam the San Francisco Bay.
And at twenty-three, he was invited to the Special Olympics World Summer Games.
Andy’s hands and feet are the size of a five-year-old’s; his height only five-feet-one-inch tall.
Even in the Special Olympics, people assume he’s an underdog.
But he’s earned fifteen world records. *
I am not different from you.
—Andy Miyares
—MOTHER—
clara hale
Foster mother. Harlem resident. The heart of Hale House.
Clara Hale turned a Harlem brownstone into a refuge. For over twenty years, she cared for infants born suffering from drug withdrawals and HIV/AIDS. For those children—and all the people who joined in to help—Hale House was proof of the power of one person.
She started with the foster kids, raising forty of them, eight at a time, in her Harlem residence.
At sixty-three years of age, Clara Hale thought she was done.
Then came the drug-addicted mother with the two-year-old falling from her arms. Clara couldn’t refuse.
Soon, twenty-two infants of drug-addicted parents were in Clara’s five-room apartment.
City officials weren’t impressed. Despite her 90 percent success rate, they tried to shut her down.
It didn’t stop Hale House. Or Clara.
People started sending their own money—like the Englishman who called, looking for the “old lady of Harlem.” It was John Lennon. He gave her $10,000.
Clara kept taking them in: children born addicted to crack, those dying of AIDS, the ones no one else wanted.
When she died at eighty-seven, Clara had helped raise almost one thousand children of every race and ethnicity.
She didn’t have money.
She didn’t have power.
Clara Hale had love.
It was endless. *
Go to her house some night, and maybe you’ll see her silhouette against the window as she walks the floor talking softly, soothing a child in her arms—Mother Hale of Harlem.
—Ronald Reagan
—THE GREATEST—
muhammad ali
Boxer. Prognosticator. Personality.
Muhammad Ali’s grace and tenacity, combined with his rope-a-dope style, made him the undisputed heavyweight champion of boxing. He didn’t just fight boxers, though. He took on the U.S. government, which charged him for refusing to serve in Vietnam. But what made him most powerful was his unbridled pride in himself.
No one floated faster.
No one stung harder.
No one taunted louder.
And no one—black or white, activist or athlete—brought more beauty, grace, or personality.
But what made him the greatest?
He never—ever—apologized for being who he was. *
Champions aren’t made in the gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them—a desire, a dream, a vision.
—Muhammad Ali
I hated every minute of training, but I said, “Don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.”
—Muhammad Ali
—ORATOR—
barack obama
President.
The journey of Barack Obama, the forty-fourth president of the United States of America, is just beginning, but even his critics acknowledge the amazing story of everything it took to arrive at the White House.
What do you call the son of a Kenyan economist and a girl from Kansas?
A black boy raised by white grandparents in a cramped two-bedroom apartment in Hawaii?
A rebellious student who scooped ice cream at Baskin-Robbins?
An idealistic college graduate searching to make a difference?
A law professor still struggling to make peace with the memory of his father?
A senator who favored the power of hope, igniting generations of believers?
You call him proof that, in America, anyone can be president. *
I will never forget that the only reason I’m standing here today is because somebody, somewhere stood up for me when it was risky. Stood up when it was hard. Stood up when it wasn’t popular. And because that somebody stood up, a few more stood up. And then a few thousand stood up. And then a few million stood up. And standing up, with courage and clear purpose, they somehow managed to change the world.
—Barack Obama
—NOVELIST—
harper lee
Author of To Kill a Mockingbird.
In 1960 Harper Lee’s first and only novel began influencing readers’ perceptions of race and innocence. It is perhaps the most celebrated American novel of the twentieth century.
She didn’t think the story was there.
Five years after starting, she was convinced her novel wasn’t worth a damn.
Maybe she should’ve become a lawyer after all.
It was then that she threw open her window and tossed the manuscript out, scattering it in the filthy snow.
In a fit, Harper Lee called her editor Tay Hohoff. No one knows what Hohoff said to her.
But when Harper Lee hung up, she went outside, gathered the pages, and saved the manuscript.
She revised and revised and revised—until To Kill a Mockingbird was ready. *
I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks.
—Scout
According to the Library of Congress, To Kill a Mockingbird is second only to the Bible in being most often cited as making a difference in people’s lives.
It is the only novel Harper Lee ever published.
—ARCHITECT—
thomas jefferson
Author of the Declaration of Independence. Thinker. Statesman. President.
Thomas Jefferson was delegated by the Continental Congress to write a document proclaiming the colonies free from British rule. His Declaration of Independence became America’s first words.
For seventeen days, the thirty-three-year-old secluded himself in a rented room in Philadelphia.
On a small, portable desk, he began writing, laying the foundations of this new American government. Unlike every nation before it, this country’s heart would
not beat with the blood of royal lines. This would be a nation based on ideals.
It took Thomas Jefferson seventeen days to find the right words. Seventeen days of writing and rewriting before he nervously presented his document to John Adams and Benjamin Franklin.
The Declaration of Independence became the greatest decree in Western civilization.
Jefferson could’ve easily taken credit for writing it. But he never bragged about his accomplishment. Even when he was elected president, most Americans never knew he was the author of their independence.
In fact, his authorship didn’t become common knowledge until years later after his death.
Because to Jefferson, the Declaration of Independence was written not just for all of America, but by all of America. It was the manifestation of a new nation and a new mind.
He was merely the messenger. *
In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.
—Thomas Jefferson
—IMMOVABLE—
mahatma gandhi
Spiritual leader. Political icon. Pacifist.
Through nonviolent civil disobedience, political and spiritual leader Mohandas Gandhi united India in a struggle for independence. Known as Mahatma—“The Great Soul”—he fought for religious tolerance, economic self-sufficiency, and the end of British rule over his country. He went to prison. He fasted. He preached. But Gandhi never raised his hand in anger. It worked.
One day, you will fight.
So how should you fight?
With your fists? With threats? With words? With weapons?
They all work. They’ve been tested—successfully—for centuries.
But to fight by purposely avoiding violence?
To refuse to raise your fist, no matter what is raised against you?
Some would call that lunacy.
Madness.
But what it really is, is courage. *
In a gentle way, you can shake the world.
—Gandhi
Whenever you are confronted with an opponent, conquer him with love.
—Gandhi
—TROUBLEMAKER—
frederick douglass
Abolitionist. Speaker. Teacher.
Frederick Douglass escaped from slavery at the age of twenty. In his speeches and books, he became one of America’s foremost orators, teaching whites, blacks, and an entire nation about the injustice of slavery, while also fighting for equality for all people.
Some arm themselves with guns.
Some with knives.
Some with bombs.
Born into slavery, Frederick Douglass armed himself with something far more dangerous.
His masters whipped him for it.
They used a hickory stick to beat him over the head.
They starved him until he collapsed.
But none of those punishments stopped him from finding it—the greatest, most powerful weapon ever created:
The ability to read.
And the bravery to share his story.
At sixteen, Frederick Douglass began teaching—illegally showing slaves how to read and write.
By twenty, he’d escaped to New York, where he found an even larger audience.
In the end, the other side had power.
Frederick Douglass just had words.
They didn’t stand a chance. *
If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
—Frederick Douglass
—COOL CUSTOMER—
chesley b. sullenberger III
Pilot. Superbly disciplined.
When the engines went dead, Captain Chesley Sullenberger kept his calm and saved 155 lives by gently landing US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River.
It’s one thing to have all the piloting experience, to know what to do when both engines on the airplane fail, to take an Airbus that’s not designed for gliding and do exactly that because you’re also a certified glider pilot.
It’s another thing to take all that experience and, as the plane is plummeting from the sky, still remain completely calm.
And it’s yet another thing—while the plane is sinking in the Hudson River and drifting with the current—to walk the aisle of the cabin, making sure all the passengers get out before you do.
And then to walk that aisle again, just to be sure.
But when it was all finished and every TV camera came to your front door—to humbly shrug and say you were just doing your job?
That wasn’t just bravery.
That was honor. *
SULLENBERGER:
We’re going to be in the Hudson.
AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL:
I’m sorry—say again, Captain?
One way of looking at this might be that for forty-two years I’ve been making small, regular deposits in this bank of experience: education and training. And on January 15 the balance was sufficient so that I could make a very large withdrawal.
—Chesley Sullenberger
—REBEL—
rosa parks
Mother of the civil rights movement.
On a crowded bus in 1955, African American seamstress Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man. Her act of defiance ignited the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which lasted 381 days. Then public busing segregation came to an end. And a movement began.
Yes, she was tired.
She had grown up with the KKK riding past her house, her grandfather standing guard with the shotgun.
She had endured seeing her school burn down—twice.
She had faced this bus driver before, when he left her to walk five miles in the rain because she sat down in the white section to pick up her purse.
She had lived with injustice her entire life.
Yes, she was tired.
But it wasn’t the kind of tired that came from aching feet.
“The only tired I was was tired of giving in.”
So when the bus driver motioned to her to stand and give her seat away to a white person, the seamstress from Montgomery, Alabama, refused.
“Well, I’m going to have you arrested,” the bus driver said.
Rosa Parks calmly replied, “You may go on and do so.”
For violating Chapter 6, Section 11, of the Montgomery City Code, Rosa Parks went to jail.
For standing up for herself—by sitting down—Rosa Parks ignited a movement. *
All I was doing was trying to get home from work.
—Rosa Parks
—INDESTRUCTIBLE—
lou gehrig
Baseball legend. World’s best first baseman. Ironman.
Despite muscle spasms and broken bones, New York Yankee Lou Gehrig played in 2,130 consecutive games. In thirteen of those seasons, he scored 100 runs and hit 100 RBI. His batting average of .361 in seven World Series brought the Yankees six titles. It took a debilitating and fatal disease to take him off the field, and even then he wasn’t beat.
For thirteen seasons, Lou Gehrig never missed a single game.
Think of it.
Think of what happens over thirteen years.
He didn’t miss a game when he was sick.
Or when he was tired, or bored, or not feeling right.