Disobedience And Civil Rights Analysis

According to Oscar Wilde, a well known Irish essayist, and novelist, “Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience, and through rebellion”. Although one may disagree with such an opinion, keeping in mind that society is taught at a very young age of what is wrong and what is right, sometimes obedience and disobedience fall under the same category. Like obedience, disobedience can also be seen as a virtue. The human race is taught to follow certain rules, obey authority, and to live their life the way the government sees fit. In other words, every single brain in the entire world conform to mold one mind, to think the same thoughts, …show more content…
On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, history was made when Rosa Parks stood her ground, refusing to give up what was rightfully hers. Back then, almost every town in the south was categorized by one’s skin color. For example, drinking fountains, stores, buses, restaurants, parks, and more were either for Caucasians or African Americans. One day, Ms. Parks was sitting in her section of a bus, the African American section, until suddenly, she was ordered by bus driver James F. Blank to give up her seat in the colored section to a white passenger after the white section was completely filled up. Rosa Parks refused to be another victim of bus segregation, so she refused to give up her rightful seat on the bus, which resulted in her arrest for disobeying the current laws at the time. Not only was she arrested, but she was fired from a local department store she worked at as a seamstress, and received multiple death threats even years after she was arrested. Ten years later, however, she served as a receptionist and secretary to John Conyers, an African American US Representative. She was also involved in the Black Power movement, and supported political prisoners of the United States. Parks’ powerful act of defiance of the Montgomery Bus Boycott became a very important symbol of the modern Civil Rights movement. With her nonviolent act …show more content…
John Scopes, a substitute high school teacher in Tennessee, was accused of violating the state’s Butler Act, which stated that the teaching of human evolution was forbidden in any state-funded school. During the trial, Scopes held his own, and was questioned on only biblical stories of God, rather than what seemed reasonable to him, which was Darwinism. Unable to fight back, Scopes was fined $100.00, but rather than backing down from the trial in the beginning, Mr. John Scopes fought fire with fire for as long as he could. He wanted to show the world that there are some flaws in the Bible that could not be explained thoroughly without a logical, scientific explanation. Not only that, but the Scopes Monkey Trial caused major national publicity by attracting the attention of famous lawyers, of which represented either side. After the trial took place, Modernists and Fundamentalists were now at war with each other. This case determined our future, and brought minds together, as well as apart, on whether or not a student’s curriculum should be centered around Darwinism or Religion. If John Thomas Scopes had not violated the law against teaching young students about the theory of evolution in local schools, society today would have been completely different. We would not have scientific evidence to