Martin Luther King, Jr. and Henry David Thoreau both argue for the right to refuse to obey certain laws for the purpose of influencing government policy. They fight for this right to disobey laws if there is social injustice in their society. Both King and Thoreau have the same ideas on civil disobedience, but they execute them differently. Thoreau laid the groundwork for future readers for the concept of civil disobedience and tells his audience to take action and to rise up against the corrupt laws that are being made. King took this concept and used it to transform the laws that were against African Americans, which were insufferable, and to show that civil disobedience should be used to free them from the intolerable acts happening around them. Thoreau and King both show that civil disobedience is necessary in society, which conveys the similarities and differences found in these two essays through their need for equality through obliterating the use of majority rule and a reformation in government representation. …show more content…
Majority rule is when the government is ruled by the majority and the minority is overlooked and does not count. Thoreau states, “But government in which the majority rule in all cases can not be based on justice, even as far as men understand it”(Thoreau). By this, Thoreau means that the government does not serve all people if they are only serving one group, no matter how vast the group is, who resolves what is ideal for all. While King shares this same view on majority rule being unjust, he takes a different approach from Thoreau to communicate this same message. King used peaceful boycotts and marches to show that he was going to be using direct action to lead and fuel the Civil Rights Movement. On the other hand, Thoreau used a more assertive and bellicose tactic to illustrate his own unique distaste for the