Henry David Thoreau's Civil Disobedience

The twentieth century saw the rise and fall of three pivotal figures in the ongoing movement for equality and justice for all peoples. Mahatma Gandhi, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Martin Luther King, Jr. all addressed the immoral and unjust actions of drastically different societies, yet all were to enact some degree of social change that would eventually result in an increased quality of life for oppressed members of their nations. A key strategy in their movements was nonviolent resistance, actively resisting unjust laws and practices and largely using only peaceful and non-harmful means to achieve their ends. This begs the question: What makes a nonviolent movement so powerful? Gandhi used nonviolence to change the minds of the British Empire,

Thoreau claims that though a man may not need to actively participate in the eradication of a egregious wrong, it “…is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support,” (Thoreau). Here, it is evident that Thoreau believes that one must refuse to support any unjust laws whether actively or passively through an action like paying the government taxes. Thoreau believes that the worth of the individual should not and cannot be compromised by the aims of an institution of government. He argues that all people have a moral responsibility to defy and rebel against laws or actions that allow injustice to rain down upon the heads of other people. Thoreau also expresses the importance of a willingness to go jail in the pursuit of civil disobedience and just practices for all, an idea that is extremely prominent in most forms of nonviolent civil disobedience. He writes, “Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also prison,” (Thoreau). This statement is embodied by Gandhi and Bonhoeffer but is especially relevant to King. African Americans in the U.S South were often imprisoned for petty crimes that many thought so ridiculous they classified the crimes as “walking while black”. The Civil Rights Movement marked an era in which thousands were unfairly and unjustly imprisoned, and Thoreau’s sentiment rings especially true in the contest of the life and work of Dr. King. Nevertheless, the willingness to go to jail was an important part in the works of all three men discussed in our course, and it is obvious that said willingness to risk incarceration provides great power and influence to a nonviolent movement. Through Thoreau’s concepts of action against unjust laws and action in pursuit of justice, one can begin to