Jacob Riis

Jacob Riis is getting a picture taken (Google)

The hero I chose is Jacob Riis because he was a skilled photographer, he was a journalist, he gave to the poor, he made many books, and he was in a couple of plays. He was born on May 3rd, 1849 in Ribe, Denmark. He died in Barrie, Massachusetts on May 26th, 1914.

Jacob Riis was never married. Jacob Riis was unable to find work and was often forced to spend the night in police stations lodging houses. He was aware of what it was like to live in poverty and "he was determined to use the opportunity he had to employ his journalistic skills to communicate to the public."

Jacob Riis had very good journalistic skills and he also had very good photographer. He was also very educated. He argued that the “poor were the victims rather than the makers of their fate.” Jacob constantly argued and used his journalistic skills to prove the poor were the victims. He was very skilled at doing mental jobs.

Jacob Riis was important because he was a journalist who wrote articles in the news, sometimes asking people to donate money or food. He also used his photographer skills to take pictures of the poor and put them in the news to lecture on the problems of the poor and to show how poor people lived and if they had houses, what their houses looked like. It made some people really think.

His biggest obstacle was convincing everyone to give to the poor and to convince a lot of people that the poor were really the victims, not the makers of their fate.

"Look at a stone cutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not the last blow that did it, but all that had gone before." Jacob Riis