English 241

American Literature to 1860

Spring 2003

Left: Daguerrotype of Henry David Thoreau. Right: Associated Press Photo. "Woman Fingerprinted. Mrs. Rosa Parks, Negro Seamstress, Whose Refusal to Move to the Back of a Bus Touched Off the Bus Boycott in Montgomery, Alabama." 1956. New York World-Telegram & Sun Collection, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.

Discussion Question

The arrest of Rosa Parks for civil disobedience for refusing to move to the Colored section of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, came after many years of her self-preparation. Along with many thousands, she had attended the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, where Thoreau was common reading, and had served for twenty years in the NAACP branch in Montgomery. The refusal of Rosa Parks to obey an unjust law was a central act in the US civil rights movement.

In 'Resistance to Civil Government,' Thoreau wrote "Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men generally, under a government such as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil. It makes it worse. Why is it not more apt to anticipate and provide for reform? Why does it not cherish its wise minority?"

He continues, "If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go...but if it 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..."

Drawing on the philosophical arguments of Emerson's Nature as an argumentative starting-point, how does Thoreau derive his political position, and how do Emerson, Thoreau and Rosa Parks form a coherent line of political thought?

Write 250-300 words and post them on the class discussion website.