Similarities Between Civil Disobedience And Martin Luther King Jr

Henry David Thoreau in “Civil Disobedience” and Martin Luther King, Jr. in “Letter from Birmingham Jail” agree that civil disobedience is necessary if unjust laws are in place. Thoreau and King both write at one point from a jail cell, and both essays are written during a time when they felt there was injustice in the government. Both men realize that there is social injustice taking place in their eras and wanted change to happen.
Thoreau attempts to convince United States citizens not to follow what the majority is doing, but to do what is right. He tries to show the citizens what the government is dong wrong and tells them to take action against them. King has a similar approach to dealing with this injustice. He is not only speaking

Thoreau’s writing is very persuasive and he almost sounds frustrated while addressing his people. He comes off as if he is giving directions to his readers, almost as a dictator. King, on the other hand, comes off as calm and respectful while addressing his readers. Even though King was in jail for an unjust reason, he was still polite and well mannered compared to Thoreau. King and Thoreau had a different way of going about things. Thoreau explains that:
In other words, when a sixth of the population of a nation which has undertaken to be the refuge of liberty are slaves, and a whole country is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to military law, I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize. What makes this duty the more urgent is that fact that the country so overrun is not our own, but ours is the invading army.

These words suggest that anything that needs to be done to go against this unjust law, no matter what it takes, should be done. King, on the other hand, uses the word “disobey”. The word disobey implies that King does not mean that he wants a revolution or a rebellion at all. King was very religious and had a gentle way of speaking. He wanted to fix the corrupt laws, but he wanted to do it calmly and respectfully. Thoreau, however, wanted to fix the unjust laws, doing whatever it took, and a lot of times expressing his own hate for the government. King wanted to better the group as a whole, while Thoreau wanted to better the individual rights of the people. Thoreau thinks that the government should be as uninvolved as possible, while King believes that a government is essential to keep