An excerpt from a recent Democracy Now interview with Jonathan Eig, the author of the new book King: A Life.

I think it’s really important for us to acknowledge that our heroes have flaws, and if we expect our heroes to be perfect, nobody will ever rise to the occasion. Nobody will even try.

And King was deeply flawed. As you mentioned, he attempted suicide twice as a teenager, jumping from a second-story window of his home when he was upset about, first, an injury suffered by his grandmother and then, later, by her death. And when he won the Nobel Peace Prize, he was hospitalized at the time for what he called anxiety, but for what Coretta described as depression. He was hospitalized numerous times throughout his life because the pressure had just gotten to him so badly.

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