The Impact Of Civil Disobediance On Society

Throughout the past, there has been events take place that changed the course of history, and will forever be remembered as a milestone towarding shaping America into the country it is today. There has been ample social injustices occur throughout history, such as segregration and woman voting, that have called for civil disobediance to obtain their goal, such as equality. One small act of disobediance can have a large impact on society. When people commit these acts, such as refusing to give up their seat, it is unlikely they realized the full effect of their action, and what they would set into motion. Civil Disobediance has led to ample changes in the world. In the United States, it is still used often. In the early to middle nineteen-hundreds, …show more content…
This is the violation of a certain law, rather than the government system as a whole. This act is often defined as a nonviolent resistance, meaning they act nonviolently to achieve their goal of a specific change. To explain this in better terms, disobediance refers to the act of disobeying, this can either be doing something that is deemed illegal, or not participating in an act that is required (Encylopeda). However, one simply disobeying a law is not characterized as civil disobediance, they must state in public they are disobeying the law in seek of change, and encourage others to participate too. People participate in these illegal actions in hopes that one day they will be deemed legal. Henry David Thoreau wrote an essay titled, “Resistance to Civil Government,” later renamed “Civil Disobediance,” published in eighteen-forty-nine, that explains this act. Slavery and the Mexican-American War caused him to write this, and in it he made the point that people should not allow the government to overrule them, they should forbid it from happening (Wikipedia). He believed it was the right of the people to fight for what they wanted and what they believed was right. Because of Thoreau’s essay, civil disobediance began to be practiced across the world. People began to use this method of protest to fight for …show more content…
The Civil Rights Movement happened in the mid-nineteen hundreds, where african-americans were fighting for their basic rights, such as the ones garunteed to caucasian Americans. During this time period, segregation was prominent, therefore laws required segregation on all city buses. This law required that colored people were to sit in the back of the bus, and if the front of the bus was full, the colored people were to move seats, or stand. This event, known as the Montgomery Bus Boycott, began on the first of Decemeber in nineteen-fifty-five, when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a caucasian man on a bus, in Montgomery Alabama (History-Montgomery Bus Boycott). Rosa was arrested and fined. That night, E D Nixon, the president of the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP, or National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, bailed her out and convinced her to assist him in ending segregation on buses (Bright Hub Education). This event was a stepping stone in the Civil Rights Movement. African-Americans began to boycott, or not use, the service of city buses in Montgomery. Since the majority of people paying to ride these buses were colored, it shifted the amount of income that went into the economy; bus companies lost thousands in revenue. Supporters of this cause stated that they would not ride the buses again until their demands, of intergration, were