An Example Of Peaceful Resistance To Civil Rights

Improved Essays
I strongly believe that peaceful resistance to a law that one disagrees with positively impacts a free society. Peaceful resistance helps teach members of a society how to have different ideas and think for themselves. If everyone sat idly by, watching laws that they did not agree with be in effect, then there would be no civil rights for African Americans, sacred Native American grounds would be violated, and more.

At age 42, civil rights activist Rosa Parks boarded a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. She decided to sit in the section that was labeled “whites only,” and when she was told she needed to move to the back of the bus she refused. Parks was then arrested for civil disobedience, but her act brought attention to the fact that African Americans were not treated the same as whites. This incident lead to a 381 day boycott of public buses led by Martin Luther King Jr. Eventually, the laws in Alabama that were challenged in a Supreme Court case in 1956 that ruled that segregation was unconstitutional. Parks has since been a prominent figure in United States history as an example of standing up for one’s beliefs.
…show more content…
King believed that no matter the race, everyone should have equality. As a minister and leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference,Martin Luther King Jr. led many men and women in a fight for desegregation. His actions led to the creation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Along with Parks, King and many others protested inequality. By boycotting the bus system in Montgomery, Alabama, King helped to bring awareness to an issue he strongly believed

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Rosa Parks purposefully broke this law, and was arrested for it. In response, Martin Luther King Jr. organized a mass protest against the Montgomery bus system by calling for a boycott. People who had previously rode the bus before suddenly refused to use them. Facing a loss of money, and increasing national attention, the city ended its discriminatory practice, giving the civil rights movement another victory, and proving the usefulness of civil…

    • 800 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In a just society there is no need to break any social rules or regulations, but once the government and society becomes corrupted then change needs to occur. As individual people our voices are weak and insignificant, but once we stand together as one then chance has a much higher chance of occurring. Peaceful resistance positively impacts a free society because the exercised freedom of some individuals can infringe on the freedoms of others, making it the duty of the citizens to flag the issue through peaceful resistance. Rosa Parks was a brave woman, knowing the consequences she still waves in her pool known as society by refusing to get up from a seat. Something that might seem trivial to us now was hugely symbolic back then, making her an icon of her time.…

    • 539 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Does peaceful resistance to laws positively or negatively impact a free society? I believe a good example for this topic is “Letter from a Birmingham Jail- Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.” Mr. King believed in a peaceful and non-violent movement to change the wrongs of society. This is an issue where many people hold differing opinions.…

    • 559 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Former president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, once said, “If a law is unjust, a man is not only right to disobey it, he is obligated to do so.” Wholeheartedly, I stand in affirmation that peaceful resistance to laws positively impacts a free society, if peaceful resistance were still to exist. Unfortunately, it does not.…

    • 645 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Peaceful resistance to laws has the possibility of having a positive or negative impact upon a free society depending on the situation, but throughout history it has been proven that more often than not civil disobedience has brought positive change. It all depends upon circumstance when deciding whether or not something can be good or bad for a society and this includes civil disobedience. While it has impacted our society positively, there are ways for it to be abused by the masses in order for them to get what they want or for the result to turn out as less than desirable, though it is unlikely that it would ever work out that way. For example, Cohen states in Seven Arguments Against Civil Disobedience that one of the arguments…

    • 505 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    I believe that peaceful resistance to laws is a positive impact on a free society. America was founded on the principles of freedom of speech and the ability to speak out against injustice. While peaceful resistance If civil disobedience was a negative thing heroes such as rosa parks or Martin Luther KIng would have never accomplished there goals. The act of peaceful resistance not only enforces the right to protest but it also helps to kickstart change without the need for violence. One should note that it takes much more courage and strength of character to peacefully protest than resort to more crude methods.…

    • 551 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    It is my view that peaceful resistance to laws positively impacts a free society, if those laws or the government enforcing them are believed to be unjust. In any true democracy, the people have a right, and an obligation, to rebel against an unjust government. As Harris G. Mirkin has written, “The Declaration of Independence, a document that Jefferson claimed was merely an ‘expression of the American mind,’ declared that it was the ‘Right of the people to alter or abolish’ any government, and institute a new one that would better secure their safety and happiness.” While rebellion in any form should not be the first choice, it is occasionally the only choice. The same principles that apply to a revolutionary rebellion also apply to a peaceful…

    • 562 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Parks kept her moral and civic duty by breaking the segregation law. In Letter from Birmingham Jail, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. asserted that there is a difference between just laws, that should be followed, and unjust laws, that should be broken: “A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law, or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.” He went further to examine that there are some laws that are “just on [their] face and unjust in [their] application.” An example of this was when King applied for a permit to assemble and was turned down because of his color.…

    • 798 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    On December 1,1955 Parks was told to move seats for a white man to sit down and she resisted. She was put in jail and Civil-Rights leaders felt that there needed to be change. This event led her to the idea of having a bus boycott where all African Americans would refuse to take the bus. “Parks was arrested for violation a city law requiring that black and white sit in separate rows on the bus” (Feltzer , pg.176) This means that she was arrested for a law that required that black and white people to sit separate in which she didn’t obey.…

    • 1394 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Discrimination of colored people through segregation laws began to be intolerable and people rose up to protest. One of the more famous protesters was Rosa Parks. During the 1950s it was required by public transportation to segregate colored people from the white people on the bus. Parks went against this rule by not leaving her seat for a white man, for this she was arrested with charges of Civil Disobedience. Her arrest inspired others including the leader of the Civil Rights movement Marin Luther King which lead to the Montgomery Bus Boycott.…

    • 1940 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Peaceful Protest Examples

    • 536 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Peaceful protesting/resistance to laws positively impacts free society. Peaceful protesting is a given natural right and is a very important right. In the 1st Amendment it states, "the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances". This allows people to change the way the government and the country is working, and usually in a positive way. When people protest it is normally because they feel something unjust has been done and that it needs to change.…

    • 536 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Peaceful resistance to laws most certainly influences our free society in a positive way. America itself was founded by people who wanted to change the laws set on them but had no power to do so, and they learned from their hardships, we know this because the Declaration of Independence states that it is a citizens duty to overthrow an unjust government. There is no doubt that the Founding Fathers knew that placing such a large amount of power in common folk would be dangerous, as most citizens of the colonies knew the damages that abusive powers such as that of King George III and how it would affect the people the most. This was not only present for the U.S.A. however, one of the most powerful examples we have today is Mohandas K. Gandhi's life to peacefully resisting the…

    • 563 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Does peaceful resistance to laws positively or negatively impact a free society? Sit ins, peace rallies of the 60's and freedom music. All of these form our country's past shows that peaceful resistance to laws positively impacts a free society. People from our own history have proved that peaceful rallies are a positive way to express your feelings, make issues come to light, get others attention and make things change. Today, people are not always peaceful when it comes to expressing their thoughts and feelings on a mass scale such as a demonstration.…

    • 673 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Peaceful resistance to the law positively impacts a free society because with this the country and world get to hear the opinions of the people. This includes the voice, ideas, and thoughts. Therefore it helps people in need without harming those who aren’t in need. How else would the government or society know if others agree or disagree with the choices or decisions made? Now, does it make a difference whether it’s a peaceful resistance or not?…

    • 631 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    In 1955, King led a boycott against city buses that refused to let blacks sit in the front seats of the bus. The protest gained followers rapidly and it led to a citywide boycott of the system until the rules were changed. After King and his followers were sent to jail, the boycott did succeed and the unfair, racist law allowing the segregation to continue was terminated. Lastly, in 1963, King made one of the most famous social activist speeches of the civil rights movement. King and other leaders organized a huge march for equal rights in Washington, D.C. where with a crowd of…

    • 2475 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Superior Essays