Civil Disobedience In Henry David Thoreau's March On Washington

In the eyes of Henry David Thoreau, civil disobedience is the concept of people standing up for what they believe is corruption—even if the rest of society disagrees—through refusal to comply by conducting peaceful protests and boycotting. Throughout history, numerous groups of people have been seen conducting civil disobedience by the precedent of Thoreau’s works to successfully reform dishonorable elements of the law. A specific instance of this is the African Americans who transformed a discriminating society through nonviolent defiance through events such as the March on Washington. The 1963 March on Washington exemplifies the beliefs of Henry Thoreau in his essay, On The Duty of Civil Disobedience, by the planning of a congregation of

President, this will be an orderly, peaceful, nonviolent protest’” (Fletcher). Randolph was confident that the protest would remain nonviolent due to the thorough planning that he and his collaborators had conducted. Furthermore, Randolph’s intention for the march was for people to work together so that they could devise ways that the government could give African Americans the treatment they deserve. The march, primarily coordinated by Randolph, is a display of Thoreau’s idea of civil disobedience, which Thoreau describes by writing, “If a thousand men were not to pay their tax bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood” (Thoreau 9). On August 28, 1963, the march had roughly 250,000 participants gathered to sing, recite poetry, and perform other spoken arts to speak out against the injustice they found within the government. This is a prime display of Thoreau’s definition of a peaceful rebellion as thousands of people had gathered and spoken out for what they believed was just in a way that the government was incapable of overlooking due to the location chosen and the media generated from