Martin Luther King Jr's Concept Of Civil Disobedience

In this historical study, an argument will be made that the Martin Luther King was influenced by Henry Thoreau’s concept of “civil disobedience” in the non-violent opposition to unjust laws. In the Civil Rights Movement, King utilized Thoreau’s concept of civil disobedience to galvanize a peace movement that relied on non-compliance with unjust laws to deescalate the violence that was being used by the police and the military against African-American in the 1950s. Thoreau’s motivation for civil disobedience relies heavily on the premise of unjust laws to provide a moral vindication for oppressed peoples to choose not to acknowledge these laws. This provides evidence of the connection with King’s underlying refusal to accept unjust racial laws being implemented by southern states, which involve the segregation of white and black people. In essence, Thoreau’s civil disobedience was a major influence on King’s civil rights leadership by refusing to acknowledge unjust laws through …show more content…
In the 1950s, King’s leadership provided a new way to countermand unjust segregating laws by bringing people together by advocating non-violence. After all, African-American riots had created chaos and havoc in local communities due to racial injustice, which only provided a rationale for the local police and military to use force. King was ware of the importance civil disobedience as a way to train Civil Rights activists to use passive resistance as a direct form of protest. This form of mobilization would involve “sit-ins” at local All-white eating establishments, sitting in seats only reserved for whites, and other measures that would break the law without violence. King () defines the importance of this aspect of Thoreau's ideology that formed the non-violent protest movement of this