The denotative meaning of civil disobedience is the refusal to obey laws as a way of forcing the government to do or change something. That "something" is usually a law or policy; but, in reality, how effective is civil disobedience by everyday citizens? Does peaceful resistance to laws positively or negatively impact a free society? The answer is not as clear cut as one might think; indeed, the results of civil disobedience are oftentimes subjective. On December 1, 1955, 42 year old Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus to a white man. She was arrested and charged with inciting civil disobedience and violating Jim Crow laws that permeated the South until 1965. The ensuing 381 day Montgomery Bus Line boycott is heralded as the start of the Civil Rights Movement (Korpe). In this case, Parks' actions were very effective in changing policy and positively impacting a free society.
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Jailed for not paying a poll tax, Thoreau contemplates on his unjust lot in life: "I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up." Thoreau's act of civil disobedience seems effective for the time period, before mass communication was available. Indeed, a Tweet from him today may have won his freedom. At the least, his actions, thoughts, and writings got Americans thinking in a new manner unseen before in the nineteenth
Jailed for not paying a poll tax, Thoreau contemplates on his unjust lot in life: "I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up." Thoreau's act of civil disobedience seems effective for the time period, before mass communication was available. Indeed, a Tweet from him today may have won his freedom. At the least, his actions, thoughts, and writings got Americans thinking in a new manner unseen before in the nineteenth