Civil Disobedience: The Purpose Of The Civil Rights Movement

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“Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue.” (Martin Luther King Jr,1963) The purpose of civil disobedience isn’t to spark violence, its purpose is to incite change. It may not be successful 100% of the time but in many cases, such as the civil rights movement, the women’s suffrage movement, and the founding of America, people were able to achieve their goals. Overall civil disobedience positively impacts a free society because it allows you to fight for what you believe in, without harming the society you hope to mend. In order for civil disobedience to be successful you must be persistent. Just like the saying, “Rome wasn’t built in a day,” the civil rights movement wasn’t successful overnight. It took over fifteen years of protests and sit-ins to gain the equality they were looking for. Before the movement African Americans were suppressed and treated very poorly, this includes the Jim Crow laws, the inability to vote, and being treated like second class citizens. Though through civil disobedience they fought and eventually prevailed with the passage of the Voting …show more content…
It’s generally the people that don’t want the change that become violent, like during the Freedom Rides when the whites opposed de-segregation in the South. Without the reaction and violence from the whites in the South being broadcast on television there wouldn’t have been enough attention drawn to the situation to force the government to act upon it. What I’m trying to say is civil disobedience draws attention to situations that the government tends to ignore or put on the back burner, and forces them to act on the issues. With the attention that it draws the government can make changes, generally, and hopefully for the
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