Martin Luther King Transcendentalism Essay

The philosophies of Henry David Thoreau and Martin Luther King Jr had an impact on transcendentalism and the Civil Rights Movement. Henry David Thoreau was a leading philosopher and transcendentalist in New England. His most famous work in 1849, Civil Disobedience, took transcendentalism and implemented into society. Thoreau’s civil acts were fundamental due to the fact that he did not integrate violence or fear. Thoreau’s defiant actions, involving governmental issues, landed him in jail because he refused to pay taxes.
More than one hundred years later, in 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr followed in Thoreau’s footsteps by participating in acts of civil disobedience in the Civil Rights Movement. The main goal of the Civil Rights Movement was to establish equality under the law. Martin Luther King was the primary leader for the Civil Rights Movement. Thoreau’s ideas became dominant as they were used by Civil Rights Activists and the Supreme Court, in cases as Brown v. Board of Education. The 1954 Brown v. Board of Education was a discrimination case against racial segregation in public schools. The Letter from Birmingham Jail was an open letter written on April 13, 1963 by Martin Luther King. In this letter, King describes the four steps to non-violent protest. The first step is “collection of the facts to determine whether an injustice exists” (Letter from Birmingham). This step relates to Thoreau’s criticism of an unjust government.
Even though Thoreau spent a short time in jail, he never took action. Martin Luther King devotes his belief in equality for all men, in spite of their race and color. The ideas presented by Henry Thoreau in 1849, were just as important to the Civil Rights Movement. Thoreau’s theories on unjust laws seemed to organize the arguments enacted by King during the Civil Rights Movement. The actions of the Civil Rights Movement is attributed from Civil