Similarities Between Civil Disobedience And Martin Luther King

People for centuries have gotten their moving inspirational speeches from impactful writers before their time. Even someone as inspirational as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, and he got his motivation from Henry David Thoreau who wrote“Civil Disobedience” which was published in 1849. The speech of King’s where “Civil Disobedience” shines through is the famous “I Have a Dream” speech. Both Thoreau’s and King’s pieces were written in a time of racial discrimination and injustice. The similarity in situations and lack of federal government participation gave King the perfect layout for some of the main portions of his speech. Thoreau and King both realized that laws were prejudice, questions were answered, and religious perspectives were mentioned.

Most white males across the United States owned slaves. Thoreau touched the idea of unjust laws exists because he knew it to be true; laws were set against slaves and were not there to protect them. Thoreau wanted to shed light on the racial injustice spreading through the states, and he wanted people to understand that just because it is a law, it does not make it the right thing to do. Flashing forward to the year 1963. Slavery had almost been abolished for 100 years when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech, yet his speech talked about racial injustices within the US. It was specifically noted in this line, “Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice..” Dr. King was referring to the Jim Crow laws that were established to segregate the whites and blacks and the police brutality directly targeted at black citizens. Thoreau and Dr. King wrote both of their works during a time of racial oppression. They both saw and understood that the laws put forth were not just, and this close relation made it simple for Dr. King to grabbed encouragement from Thoreau’s

Thoreau says, “Why does it always crucify Christ..,” saying why do the people in charge kill the ones others see as inspiration? The way King mentioned religion was different but the intention was the same. King mentions it by saying, “Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.” King gave the notion that even though people of higher power kill off inspirations, they are still living within the people, such as God. The ideas of both King and Thoreau are interconnected but mentioned in a different