Peaceful Resistance To Civil Rights

I believe peaceful resistance to laws positively impacts a free society. Peaceful resistance is a way to express your beliefs and protest potentially other harmful policies or laws. More importantly, I feel it also inspires change. While violence escalates tensions and leads to revenge, peaceful resistance should inspire thoughtful progress and civilized improvements in a free society.

During the Civil Rights movement, Rosa Parks was a great example of someone who refused to accept the law and, because of it, laid a path to change. Rosa Parks refused to give her seat on a bus to a white man, as required by segregation laws in Alabama. Her actions resulted in a court case against racial laws that went all the way up to the Supreme Court. When the Court ruled bus segregation was unconstitutional, it was a turning point in the Civil Rights movement. There was no violence associated with her protest, yet it still got Rosa Parks, along with the rest of the African Americans, what they wanted. Peaceful resistance can better a society by promoting equality, just as Rosa Parks did.

Another example of successful peaceful resistance was Gandhi. His non-violent movement was a significant part of India’s efforts to gain independence from Great Britain. Throughout his life, he took on many hunger strikes to protest the treatment of
They allow a free society to question its morals and ethics. While the response to the civil disobedience may be violent or harmful to the protestor, history certainly shows this to be a powerful tool for change. When the results of these examples and others are analyzed over time, the benefits to society in the form of equal rights, freedom of speech and fair policy are evident. The moral and ethical strides made by these examples over time make it hard to prove peaceful resistance is anything but positive for a free