In the 1960s, John Lewis and his fellow civil rights activists were influenced by Thoreau’s beliefs presented in “Civil Disobedience.” In what ways did these civil rights activists follow the principles professed by Thoreau in his essay?

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Explanation:

The civil rights activists wanted to put an end to the Jim Crow laws that segregated blacks from whites and impeded the ability of African Americans to vote. These activists believed in breaking Jim Crow laws, which they deemed corrupt. Their actions are similar to Thoreau's attempt to evade paying the poll tax because he deemed the tax to be corrupt. Both the 1960s activists and Thoreau were not afraid of being jailed because it would generate attention. They gladly welcomed time in jail. The line “When I came out of prison—for some one interfered, and paid that tax” from “Civil Disobedience” demonstrates that Thoreau did not fear spending time in jail.

Civil rights activists worked to create awareness of their goals through their marches and protests as seen in this line from Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement: “I saw it as an opportunity to highlight what we were doing and facing with our direct action all throughout the South, a chance yet again to call the nation's attention to the ugliness and violence and suffering.” This statement confirms the civil rights activists’ motives. Their actions would bring the corrupt laws to the attention of the nation's people, who would urge their government officials to change the laws.

Thoreau’s goal was to bring about changes that would help the common man, as noted in this line from "Civil Disobedience: “There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly.” Similarly, the civil rights activists felt the need to elevate the common man’s plight, as shown in these words from Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement: “There was a tremendous need then, and there remains today, for someone to take hold of the urban centers in the North and give them that sense of direction.”

Both Thoreau and the civil rights activists refrained from using violence to achieve their respective ends as they both believed nonviolence is more influential. In Thoreau’s case, this view is supported in this excerpt from "Civil Disobedience":

. . .you do not put your head into the fire. But just in proportion as I regard this as not wholly a brute force, but partly a human force, and consider that I have relations to those millions as to so many millions of men, and not of mere brute or inanimate things, I see that appeal is possible, first and instantaneously, from them to the Maker of them, and, secondly, from them to themselves.

In the case of the civil rights activists, this line from Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement supports their advocacy of nonviolence: ". . .but I never accepted his ideas. I didn't—and I don’t—have any sympathy with black nationalism, separatism, the attitude of an eye for an eye or violence of any sort.”

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explanation: