When laws are unjust, governments are corrupt, and human rights are violated, what is a moral-minded person meant to do? Henry David Thoreau, a writer best known for Walden, would advocate for civil disobedience. It’s a philosophy activists like Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. have promoted, and in a world where we can’t always trust our leaders or laws, it’s an essential tool for justice and human rights. In this article, we’ll describe the history and definition of civil disobedience, the four main types, and four real-world examples.
What’s the history of civil disobedience?
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) gets credit for the term “civil disobedience.” In protest against slavery in the United States, Thoreau refused to pay taxes. No legal action was taken against him until the late 1840s when he started speaking against the United States’ war on Mexico. Like many Northern critics of the war, Thoreau believed the South was using the war to expand slavery. Thoreau was jailed for tax delinquency, but because someone anonymously paid his taxes, he spent just one night in jail. It nevertheless had a profound impact on Thoreau, who published the essay “Civil Disobedience” in 1849. He wrote that it wasn’t enough to hold a moral opinion; people must act on it, even if that meant disobeying the government. On injustices like slavery, he wrote, “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.”
Thoreau may have coined the term “civil disobedience,” but it’s not the only concept of its kind. Mahatma Gandhi, one of the most famous practitioners of civil disobedience, developed the philosophy of “satyagraha,” which is the refusal to cooperate with evil and a commitment to nonviolent strategies. Civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King was inspired by both Thoreau and Gandhi, so the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s used many civil disobedience tactics. We’ll describe specific examples of civil disobedience later in this article.
How is civil disobedience defined?
While peaceful protests and civil disobedience are often used interchangeably, civil disobedience has a few unique characteristics. The main one is that an act of civil disobedience must break the law. Attending a legal protest to remember victims of gun violence is not civil disobedience. However, if there’s a police order to disperse, refusing to leave despite threats of criminal charges is an act of civil disobedience. The other main characteristics are intentionality and motivation. Civil disobedience involves deliberately breaking the law with the greater good in mind. If someone accidentally breaks the law with no principled motive behind their act, it’s just regular law-breaking. While it may draw attention to an injustice and inspire others, it’s not a true act of civil disobedience because the person didn’t knowingly disobey.
What are the different types of civil disobedience?
Civil disobedience includes many acts, but based on our research, they tend to fall within at least one of four categories: protests, occupations, noncompliance, and targeted defiance.
Protests
We’re defining protests as acts that occur in public, such as vigils, marches, and speeches. They may occur in public parks, outside public buildings, on roads, and in other places where they draw attention. The right to protest is a human right (Article 20 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says everyone has the right to peaceful assembly), but States harness a variety of methods to criminalize protests, which often makes participation in them an act of civil disobedience. A protest may start as legal, but if people refuse to leave after police order them to, it’s civil disobedience. Some protests are designed to break the law from the start, such as climate protestors who block traffic.
Occupations
Occupations are a form of protest, but unlike marches or speeches, they’re designed to take control of an area or a building. Occupy Wall Street is one example, where for 58 days in 2011, hundreds of protestors flowed in and out of a New York park in protest of wealth disparity, the financial crisis, and the lack of accountability. The camp offered internet, free meals, laundry services, and a library. Occupations like Occupy Wall Street not only want to raise awareness of an issue, but also model alternative power structures, provide education, and build community. When headquartered in a public space, an occupation may not start as a crime, but it quickly becomes one when people engage in law-breaking activities, like refusing to leave, setting up tents, handing out food, and staying overnight.
Noncompliance
Noncompliance is the refusal to comply with a law in service of a greater cause. Thoreau’s refusal to pay taxes in protest of slavery is a clear example. In the 1960s, many men engaged in noncompliance by refusing to participate in the Vietnam draft. Boxer Muhammad Ali famously refused to be drafted, saying, “Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on Brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs?” He was given a heavy fine and prison sentence, but his conviction was overturned in 1971. Many people now look at the decision to not comply with the Vietnam draft with admiration.
Targeted defiance
Targeted defiance is similar to noncompliance, but it involves breaking a law through a specific counter-act, not just a refusal to act. For example, activists during the Civil Rights Movement would go into whites-only shops and restaurants and refuse to leave until they were served. This was a direct and targeted action against Jim Crow laws that allowed the segregation of society by race. Some people who engage in targeted defiance intend to be arrested, so they can raise awareness of a problematic law and even force a court to declare the law unjust. Depending on the legal consequences, targeted defiance can be very risky, but all civil disobedience comes with risks.
What are real-world examples of civil disobedience?
The most effective acts of civil disobedience are creative, strategic, and inspiring. Here are four examples:
Gandhi’s salt march
In 1882, the British government made it illegal for Indians to collect or sell salt. Salt was only available from the British, which created an unjust monopoly and forced Indians to pay a high salt tax. In 1930, civil rights activist Gandhi set off on a month-long march, producing salt along the way and building a community of protestors. By the time he reached the coast, thousands had joined him in breaking the salt law. He was arrested and spent a year in prison, but the acts of civil disobedience continued. Following many movements and protests informed by Gandhi’s nonviolent beliefs, India became independent from Great Britain in 1947.
Rosa Parks on the bus
In 1955, activist and seamstress Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat for a white passenger. Alabama law stated that a Black person must give up their seat if the section for white people was full, so by refusing, she broke the law. Her arrest triggered a bus boycott that lasted 381 days, sparking the Civil Rights Movement and eventually ending segregation on public transportation. Activists around the country engaged in other acts of civil disobedience, like sit-ins, unpermitted marches, and picketing. The landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 expanded civil rights protections, prohibited discrimination, and strengthened voting rights, although, as the National Urban League writes in an introduction to a 2024 report, “the fight for equality is far from over.”
Kathrine Switzer and the Boston Marathon
The Boston Marathon is the world’s oldest marathon, but when it was established in 1897, only men could run it. By 1967, that hadn’t changed, which runner Kathrine Switzer thought was ridiculous. In an interview, she explains that society didn’t like the idea of women participating in sports because it made them look unladylike, while others thought it was simply impossible for women to run long distances. Wanting to prove people wrong, she entered the race with her initials (she always signed her name that way, she said she wasn’t trying to hide her identity) and she was approved. She didn’t hide her hair or face, and despite a physical attack by officials, she became the first woman to officially complete the race. In 1972, the Boston Marathon finally allowed women to register.
The 2023-2024 campus protests for Palestine
In October 2023, following a Hamas attack on Israel, Israel launched a catastrophic military operation across the Gaza Strip, killing at least 44,000 people, more than half of whom are women and children. Protests spread across US and European college campuses as students called for an end to the slaughter and for schools to sever financial ties with Israeli defense companies. Students engaged in a variety of civil disobedience acts, including occupying buildings and setting up tents. According to The Guardian, more than 3,000 students in the US were suspended, arrested, or charged with crimes, even though most protests were peaceful. At the time of writing, most schools had not divested and students are still being punished, but many are reminded of the anti-apartheid protests of the 1980s. Students protested for years until apartheid ended in 1990. Acts of civil disobedience don’t always work right away; persistence matters.
