Civil Disobedience

Historical Background

The philosophical origins of civil disobedience can be traced to the Greek philosopher Plato, who questioned a citizen's duty to obey an unjust law. Christian thinkers such as St. Thomas Aquinas advanced the concept of natural law or universal principles that are superior to man-made statutes. American author and thinker Henry David Thoreau is credited with coining the phrase civil disobedience in an 1844 lecture in which he asserted that an individual has a moral obligation to disobey a law that perpetuates injustice. Since government depends on the consent of the governed, he reasoned, citizens have the right to withdraw their support from unjust laws such as those upholding [Page 301]slavery. Thoreau famously elected to spend a night in jail rather than pay taxes to support the Mexican War. The most influential modern proponent of civil disobedience was Mahatma Gandhi, who developed his philosophy of nonviolent resistance while working to win civil rights for Indians in South Africa and later while campaigning to end British rule in his native India. Gandhi's teaching of satyagraha, or “soul force,” emphasized that unfair laws must be opposed by moral means. He stressed that protesters must not be motivated by hatred of their adversaries, must not retaliate if attacked, and should be willing to accept punishment without complaint. The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. was Gandhi's best-known American disciple. He combined a commitment to justice with the Christian notions of “loving one's enemy” and “turning the other cheek” in the face of assault.

Montgomery Bus Boycott

The most celebrated instance of civil disobedience in the United States took place in Montgomery, Alabama, on December 1, 1955, when African American Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a White passenger on a segregated city bus. Other African Americans had been arrested for defying segregation laws, but Parks's arrest sparked a bus boycott lasting 381 days. Dr. King's prominent role in the boycott provided a national platform from which he articulated his version of Gandhi's philosophy. Not all participants in the Civil Rights Movement accepted nonviolence as a way of life, but most agreed that it could be a powerful tactic in the struggle for human rights.

Ironically, the legal doctrine of “separate but equal,” which Parks challenged, was an unintended consequence of an earlier act of civil disobedience. In June 1892, Homer Plessy, a light-skinned African American, defied a Louisiana Jim Crow law by riding in a Whites-only train car. When the Supreme Court decided the case of Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, it ruled that separate facilities did not violate the Constitution, thus giving legal sanction to segregation.

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