He expressed these views both lyrically and plainly in the two books published during his lifetime-A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1848) and Walden, or Life in the Woods (1854)-in the lectures he gave from Boston to Bangor, Maine in his published essays, including “Resistance to Civil Government” (1849) (later retitled “Civil Disobedience”) and in the personal journals he started at Emerson’s urging, kept throughout his life, and that filled twenty volumes when published after his death. Thoreau distills philosophical thought-such as Transcendentalism- and objective, sensory, scientific collection of concrete facts-such as Darwin claimed as his methodology-into a unique expression of integration: of self with nature, of self with culture, of culture with nature. When such external institutions as the church and the government divert the individual from the overarching unity of themselves and nature, then Thoreau thought the individual should prefer integrity over conformity. For Thoreau, nature has subjective value and meaning and shapes not only the body but also the mind and spirit. By realizing self-unity and being true to his individual self, he sought to realize his true selfhood as an organically-rendered microcosm of the macrocosm that is the world in nature. Letter from Birmingham Jail - Martin Luther King Jr.įrom Wikipedia: The Letter from Birmingham Jail or Letter from Birmingham City Jail, is an open letter written on April 16, 1963, by Martin Luther King Jr., written from the city jail in Birmingham, Alabama, where he was confined after being arrested for his part in the Birmingham campaign.Henry David Thoreau sought to live an essentialist life, one devoid of the unnatural excrescences loaded upon individuals by society and societal institutions. President Johnson's speech to the full Congress asking for their support to pass a voting rights bill guaranteeing that right to African Americans.

Such tests were used as a requirement to register to vote until restrictions in the Voting Rights Act of 1965 made them all but illegal. It argues that people should not permit governments to overrule or atrophy their consciences, and that people have a duty to avoid letting the government make them the agents of injustice.Īlabama's Literacy Test in 1965.

Lesson 35: How Have Civil Rights Movements Resulted in Fundamental Political and Social Change in the United States?Ĭivil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreauįrom Wikipedia: Civil Disobedience ( Resistance to Civil Government) is an essay by Henry David Thoreau first published in 1849.

Thoreau essay on civil disobedience