If you watch modern movies you will find that these days it is much easier to be a hero than it was fifty years ago. The world offers us multiple opportunities to prove ourselves and give us the self-satisfaction of being able to say we are a hero. But what is a hero? Grant says, “A hero is someone who does something for others. He does something that other men do not and cannot do. He is different from other men. He is above other men. No matter who those other men are, the hero, no matter who he is, is above them.” (193) Grant obviously fits his description as a hero. He proved himself a hero by advising Jefferson while he was a teacher with “more than enough” problems. “It doesn't matter anymore. Just do the best you can. But it won't matter." (Antoine, 66) Grant's former teacher, Matthew Antoine, has been embittered by whites and has no hope for African Americans. He opened his eyes to the obvious and believes that African Americans are stuck below whites and were born to work like mules and live like dogs. Antoine says: “Forget it. Go ahead and be the nigga you were born to be, but forget about life. (65) He was a realist and a nonconformist; the world needed someone like Grant, someone who would stand up for their race, fight for equality, and shatter Antoine's belief in the ruin of black men. This is what Grant did. He stood up for his class and became a teacher to make a difference in any way he could. The time Grant lived in took the word "easy" out of Grant's task of doing something no one else would do. “I am the teacher…and I teach what the white people around here tell me to teach: reading, writing and “rithmetic.” They never told me how to keep a black boy out… in the middle of the paper… where racism was involved in his daily life. He was born to be a failure, to be beneath white people. His former teacher believed that everything he fought for in this world was useless because of the fate of African Americans. Grant proved this thinking wrong by taking action and using what little free will he had to make a difference and do his part in changing the future of people of color. Fighting against unjust justice and all odds against him in this white-dominated world, he continued to resist and continued to help Jefferson even though he himself did not want to cooperate and ignore the actions of his loved one. He taught Jefferson to see himself as the person he could be, and not as the person he was expected to be; to be above the thoughts of anyone else and be the man he was born to be, not the nigger his destiny told him to be. Works Cited A Lesson Before Dying book.