Thesis Oscar Wilde wrote that disobedience is one of the most important virtues and that all progress has been made through it, this holds true today as civil disobedience when executed in a careful and violence-avoidant way for the right causes can be powerful tool for progress with social systems Example 1 (History) Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King Jr. used nonviolent civil disobedience to progress the Civil Rights movement. King organized boycotts, sit-ins, and marches to protest Jim Crow in the state of Alabama and in the south. These tactics were successful in helping African Americans progress toward civil equality after centuries of extreme inequality in the United States. The actions of King and his supporters led to the passing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the rule of Brown v. Board of Education which overturned Plessy v. Ferguson and officially outlawed segregation in the United States. This illustrates not only how civil disobedience is effective, but also that it can be executed without being violent or breaking the law with serious offenses. When done right it can draw mass support and respectability to a cause. Example 2 (Reading/Film) 12 Angry Men …show more content…
By the end of the play juror 8 convinces the rest of the jury and ultimately saves the boy’s life. Juror 9 displays disobedience because he went against the popular opinions of the rest of the jury. By doing this he also exposed how biased some of the jury was against the boy because he was from a poorer area. In this case disobedience was important because it saved a life and prevented social biases from being part of that decision. It is also another example of disobedience being successful without