20 Legends Who Shook the World

I was exhilarated to receive the supplement to the latest issue of TIME (Nov. 7, 2011): LIFE'S LEGENDS: 20 Who Shook The World. In it are a big photo of each of these 20 legends and a short article about them. Better yet, the same stories are accessible online.

http://www.life.com/gallery/66401/image/ugc1329101/20-legends-who-shook-the-world#index/0

The 20 legends are Marion Brando, Jackie Robinson, Marilyn Monroe, Martin Luther King Jr., Chuck Yeager, Winston Churchill, Georgia O'Keeffe, Margaret Bourke-White, Edmund Hillary, Ingrid Bergman, Edwin Hubble, Muhammad Ali, Frank Lloyd Wright, Audrey Hepburn, Yves Saint Laurent, Marian Anderson, Mohandas K. Gandhi, Isamu Noguchi, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.



Four of the legendary figures are mentioned in Unit 5 "I Have a Dream." To provide good reading material for students to read, I'd like to post their stories as follows:

20 Legends Who Shook the World 

Martin Luther King Jr.: Conscience of a Nation 

In a heady, concerted decade and a half of activism, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. broke down countless barriers and inspired real and lasting change -- as if he knew that, like his role model Mohandas K. Gandhi, his civil disobedience would ultimately lead to his violent death, and so he must work tirelessly in the short time allotted him. By the time King turned 35 years old, in 1964, he'd led the Montgomery bus boycott, vaulted to the forefront of the civil rights movement, helped organize the pivotal 1963 March on Washington, established a reputation as one of the most thrilling orators in American history, and -- almost incidentally -- became the youngest person ever to win the Nobel Peace Prize. He was still working for social justice, advocating for workers' rights and against the Vietnam War, when he was murdered in Memphis less than four years later, on April 4, 1968. More than any other single individual, he actively challenged the United States to live up to the promises of the Constitution, while inspiring others around the globe to fight for their rights. 

Winston Churchill: Lion of Britain

If Winston Churchill had left public life in 1937, at age 63, he might have been regarded as a mere footnote, or even an abject failure, in England's long history: the bureaucrat who orchestrated such disasters as the Battle of Gallipoli in World War I and England's return to the gold standard in the 1920s. Instead, confident in his abilities and his vision for the nation's future, he refused to simply fade away. He battled his way back from those early career debacles, and today is celebrated as the savior of Britain, the epitome of the right leader emerging at exactly the right time. In the 1930s, his warnings about the Nazi threat went unheeded, but after World War II broke out, he was rewarded for his foresight with the Prime Ministry -- and the terrible responsibility of telling Britons they were in for a long struggle marked by "blood, toil, tears, and sweat." Nonetheless, his legendary bulldog tenacity inspired England and others battling the Axis Powers. Having led his nation to victory, he continued to shape the postwar world through diplomacy and rhetoric (as in the 1946 speech at Westminster College in Missouri, where he coined the phrase "iron curtain"). His prolific writings earned him the 1953 Nobel Prize for Literature; his prodigious and brave statecraft, meanwhile, won him the eternal gratitude of his countrymen. 

Franklin Delano Roosevelt: The People's President

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Those words, so frequently repeated and even parodied since originally uttered, might have lost a bit of their power over the decades. But when first broadcast in 1933, they stirred a nation -- not least because the man who spoke them, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, led by example, fearlessly facing down soul-crushing personal adversity and formidable enemies to guide America through two of the darkest crises of the 20th century. The first President to master mass media, he took to the radio to reassure a disheartened citizenry during the Great Depression. His New Deal radically transformed the role of government, creating a safety net (with programs like Social Security) to protect the public from capitalism's sometimes disastrous vicissitudes. Of the business interests that opposed him, he said, "I welcome their hatred" -- a sentiment he surely extended to the Axis Powers as the commander in chief during World War II. And he did it all while wheelchair-bound (FDR became paralyzed at the age of 39). After being elected to four terms of office (a feat no one will ever duplicate), he died while still President, shortly before WWII ended -- living long enough to witness the unmistakable signs of America emerging as an economic and military superpower. 

Mohandas K. Gandhi: Man of Peace 

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. This quotation, so often misattributed to Gandhi, nevertheless neatly encompasses his truly revolutionary strategy of applying the long-established principle of "nonviolent resistance" on a vast, political scale -- a strategy that, over three tumultuous decades, effectively overthrew England's empire and transformed India from Britain's most populous colony into the world's largest democracy. Across 30 years of protest, privation and prison terms, the Mahatma (Sanskrit for "Great Soul") remained a man of patience and restraint -- even as he and his followers weathered often-brutal physical attacks with unwaveringly peaceful defiance. He insisted his tactics were both spiritual and practical. He fasted often, both for self-purification and as a political statement. He spun yarn to make his own clothes (LIFE's Margaret Bourke-White famously photographed him with his spinning wheel), urging Indians to do the same -- not merely in order to live simply, but to end their dependence on the British-owned textile industry. Gandhi's trailblazing nonviolent rebellion inspired international followers, among them Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, and Burma's Aung San Suu Kyi. He was the father of a nation that, with the rest of the world, still struggles to heed his example, and live up to his ideals.