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Issue
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King
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Thoreau
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Slavery/Segregation
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“All segregation statutes are unjust
because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives
the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense
of inferiority. Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher
Martin Buber, substitutes an "I it" relationship for an "I
thou" relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of
things. Hence segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically
unsound, it is morally wrong and sinful. Paul Tillich has said that sin is
separation. Is not segregation an existential expression of man's tragic
separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness?”
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“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. “
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The
moral imperative to break unjust laws
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“One
has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws.
Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”
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“...if
it [law] is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of
injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter
friction to stop the machine.”
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In 1846, transcendentalist thinker and writer Henry
David Thoreau spent a thoughtful night in jail. He had refused to pay his poll
tax in an effort to protest the evils of slavery and the annexation of Mexico.
Some 100 years later, in 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spent a night in a
jail in Birmingham, Alabama. King had protested the evils of segregation without
a permit and was promptly incarcerated. Both men engaged in acts of civil disobedience, a form of
political protest in which one rebels against an institution and readily
accepts the punishment. Thoreau recorded his experience in the aptly titled
essay, “Civil Disobedience”; King’s experiences were collected in an epistle: “Letter
from a Birmingham Jail.” Both men possess
similar views regarding civil disobedience, as they both protested racially
motivated discrimination—slavery and segregation—and both felt that moral
citizens have an obligation to break unjust laws. However, they differed in
their views regarding the necessity of government. King recognized its
importance; Thoreau, a more ardent individualist, possessed a deep antipathy
towards government in general.
Thoreau and King spent their
lives battling government-sponsored racism. Thoreau was troubled by the notion
that the government supported slavery. He could not condone his tax money being
used to support slavery. Thus, his form of civil disobedience was financial in
nature—he refused to pay his poll tax. In doing so, Thoreau hoped to spark a
bloodless revolution: “In other
words, when a sixth of the population of a nation which has undertaken to be
the refuge of liberty are slaves… I think that it is not too soon for honest
men to rebel and revolutionize.” Nearly ten
years later, the issue of slavery reached a head, and the Civil War brought an
end to its tenure in America. However, racial violence in America was far from
over. Nearly 100 years later, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the de facto head of
the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, was embroiled in a battle against
segregation, the most inviolate remainder of slavery. King condemned the sinful
“separation” caused by Jim Crow: “Paul Tillich has said that sin is
separation. Is not segregation an existential expression of man's tragic
separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness?” King
brought attention to this issue, protesting in the city of Birmingham in 1963. King
refused to abide the bureaucratic
loopholes… Both used civil disobedience to combat slavery and segregation.
Mahatma
Gandhi, the leader of a non-violent revolution in India, once said, “An unjust
law is itself a species of violence.” King writes: “Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that
degrades human personality is unjust.” Hence,
an unjust law is inherently violent in its destruction of one’s very humanity.
