Civil Disobedience Dbq

I consider civil disobedience to be an easily-ignored pillar upon which our democracy was founded. In fact we are only established as a nation now because our founding fathers engaged in civil disobedience themselves. We were in a “social contract” of sorts with Great Britain and when we felt that they had not upheld their part of the contract (they did not allow us to create courts to maintain order, or to create a navy to defend ourselves, or to sustain our economy due to an inability to trade with any other countries), Thomas Jefferson concluded that it was our not only our right, but also our duty to break away. And it was Thomas Jefferson that combined all of the works of the great thinkers before him such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke

Perhaps its most notable appearances were by Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks. King stated in his famous letter from Birmingham Jail that he was there “because injustice is here” and that he would sit in there if it meant defending what was right. Over the course of his life, King was jailed 29 times for offenses relating to his peaceful protests, but kept protesting nonetheless because he knew he was right in his actions and was willing to make others listen even if that meant taking the consequences. Rosa Parks took a similar mindset a few years prior when she stated, “You must never be fearful about what you are doing when it is right” about her willingness to be jailed for her cause. It is looking at amazing figures like these who have broadcasted the practice of civil disobedience for the world to see, not with their words, but with their actions, that give justification to peaceful resistance in the face of authority. And it is based on historical examples like these that I come to my conclusion that peaceful resistances are an essential part of any healthy, free

In fact, I would only categorize a society as being “free” if its citizens are able to disobey the government peacefully as a means to make their views known to the public. From the founding of this fine country, through the civil rights movements, up to modern day politics and every era in between, civil disobedience has made its presence and importance known to all. I truly believe that without the ability to stand up for your opinions, a society would devolve into a more restricted and eventually oppressive state. For as long as the government holds power over the lives of those which it governs, I understand it to be true that it is the obligation of the people to keep track of the government’s actions and to have the courage to speak out when they take issue with its