Civil Disobedience

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses how Thoreau's essay influenced other leaders of passive resistance campaigns, especially Gandhi and Martin Luther King. It states that Henry David Thoreau may have originally coined the term, "civil disobedience." The paper asks if anyone has been influenced by his writing since he wrote his essay in 1849. It shows how Martin Luther King, Jr. and India's Gandhi were both highly motivated in their fight for equality by the writings of Thoreau. They used his writings to form their own methods of civil protest and civil disobedience, carrying Thoreau's theories around the world.

From the Paper:

"Henry David Thoreau may be most known for his lonely stint at Walden Pond, but he also wrote many essays commenting on his times, and the world around him. Thoreau consistently used his own brand of civil disobedience to protest the wrongs he saw around him. One means he used to protest was his refusal to pay a local poll tax. He had not been paying the tax since approximately 1842, in a protest against slavery, and his non-payment caught up with him in 1846, when he spent a night in the local jail. He was prepared to stay longer, but someone, probably a relative, paid the tax, and he was released. His brief stay was quite influential in his work however, and he wrote "Civil Disobedience" partly as a retort about his time in jail."

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