Civil Disobedience In The Civil Rights Movement

Civil Disobedience, the act of opposing a law one considers unjust and peacefully disobeying it while accepting the consequences, is often used to describe the large Civil Rights Movement of the South from 1954-1968 and some of the recent, largely broadcasted, election riots. The phrase ‘civil disobedience’ which has become increasingly more popular these past few months to describe the protests following the results of the presidential election, is not really following the true peaceful civil disobedience that is intended and was portrayed in the historical movement throughout the South. While the past civil rights movement positively affected our free society, these protests, the new ‘civil disobedience’, are negatively affecting our society today. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, the young men and women in Birmingham’s Children’s March, the college students

These riots were brought on by the strong feeling of dislike people have towards the newly elected president, Donald Trump, and their beliefs that protesting will alter the electoral college’s vote for our new president. The actions taken by protesters across the U.S. in the mostly liberal states have created the opposite reaction to what they were trying to accomplish in the first place. Instead of following in the footsteps of the peaceful demonstrators of the Civil Rights Movement, these demonstrators have caused an uproar that have ruined hard earned businesses, caused millions of dollars in damage, and injured innocent bystanders who freely voted, which was the main focus of the movements in the South. This movement can divide the nation instead of uniting, the opposite of what the Civil Rights Movements