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Civil Disobedience the ideas of Thoreau and Dr King

in jail than go against his will. The passage, Your money is your life, why should I haste to give it my money,? (Thoreau, 538) illustrates how strongly he felt. It was very important to Thoreau to inform the public about the war. He wanted people to realize why it was wrong to support it. Thoreau never rallied hundreds and thousands of people together, violently or nonviolently, to get reactions. Instead, he went to jail to protest and wrote his essay, Civil Disobedience. Thoreaus philosophy was to get people to think and take their own approach to a situation. Many years after Thoreaus Civil Disobedience, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. took the same idea of direct action to protest the injustices brought upon black Americans in the United States. King used peaceful sit-ins and rallies to unite the black community. Blacks were forced to sit in the back of the busses, use separate bathrooms, water fountains, spaces in a restaurant, and schools. Segregation made blacks feel inferior and unequal. King led many black protesters in using methods such as boycotting buses, sit-ins, and various marches. These non-violent acts of public speech and action eventually lead to Kings arrest for leading a march in Birmingham, Alabama. While being held in Birmingham City Jail, King wrote, Letter from Birmingham City Jail to his fellow clergymen. This letter expressed, to a great extent, how disappointed he was with segregation in the U.S. and how people believed so much in the myth of time to cure the problem. The myth of time is the idea that time will cure all problems. King did not believe in this idea and wanted problems to be fixed right away. He wanted direct action, which purpose was, to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation.(King, 292). Even though King addressed this letter to my fellow clergymen,(King, 289) he really wrote the letter to white moderates...

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