Questions about civil disobedience, which is the nonviolent breaking of a law as a form of political protest, have been asked since the beginning of the history of the United States by those who are not fighting for a cause. Often, arguments are made that the law must not be challenged, as if the law is a solid all-knowing being that must not be crossed. These are the people in this country who believe that peaceful disobedience is a threat to the peace. However, as Martin Luther King Jr. once eloquently said :"True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it's the presence of justice." This is the argument of those who protest; that they are fighting for justice without using violence. Many movements from the eighteenth to twenty-first century have proven that civil disobedience can be an effective method to garner support in an attempt to come closer to true justice and equality so that, eventually, all will be equal as intended.. …show more content…
Protests often featured breaking laws to demonstrate how unjust and ridiculous those laws were. Televised news of the abuse of protesters brought sympathy to the movement.By protesting in ways that are bothersome to those you are fighting against but harmless to anyone else, your cause is painted as on the moral high ground. This was exactly the case for the Civil Rights Movement, which succeeded in exactly this way. An iconic example is the story of Rosa Parks, whose demonstration against segregation by refusing to move on a bus caused national discourse over the issue of segregation and eventually became a key part of the civil rights