Martin Luther King Jr & Henry David Thoreau

Martin Luther King Jr.

Henry David Thoreau

Audio of Martin Luther King Jr. 

Letter from Birmingham

https://youtu.be/ATPSht6318o

1. In Martin Luther King, Jr's Letter from Birmingham Jail:  

King sites conscience as a guide to obeying just laws and defying unjust laws. How close is his position to that of Henry David Thoreau? Do you think that King had read Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience" as an important document regarding morality and immorality? Compare and contrast the positions of these two writers.

Martin Luther King Jr was immense on laws being just. If something was unjust, he believed in defying them till things were right. Being defiant came with its consequences as MLK ended up in the Birmingham Jail, in 1963. There, he wrote the well-known "Letter from Birmingham". Dr. King said it best "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." I believe this correlates to Henry Davids Thoreau and his work "Civil Obedience".  Henry David Thoreau was very firm on moral values and thought people should do what their conscience tells them, and not to follow unjust laws. 

There's a considerable possibility Dr. King had read Thoreaus' "Civil Obiendence" regarding mortality and immortality. In his letter, Dr. King said " Lamentably, it is a historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals." This is very parallel with Thoreau's thoughts, as  he said in "Civil Obidence"" After all, the practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the people, a majority are permitted, and for a long period continue, to rule is not because they are most likely to be in the right, nor because this seems fairest to the majority, but because they are physically the strongest. But a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it. Can there not be a government in which majorities do not virtually decide wrong, but conscience?"

Even though Martin Luther King Jr. and Henry David Thoreau had similar ideas, their writing had differences as well. They had different views on determining what was just and what wasn't. Dr. King thought anything that didn't follow God's rules or Ten commandments it wasn't just. Thoreau believed things weren't just depending on your own conscience, it was more of self-governing.