"One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that 'an unjust law is no law at all.'" — Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail, April 1963
King's appeal to civil disobedience drew on which earlier American intellectual tradition?
- Acheck_circle
Henry David Thoreau's essay 'Civil Disobedience' (1849)
- B
Booker T. Washington's Atlanta Compromise
- C
William Lloyd Garrison's call for southern secession
- D
John C. Calhoun's doctrine of nullification
Explanation
King explicitly cited Thoreau's tradition of moral resistance to unjust laws, joining it with Gandhian nonviolence and Christian theology to justify direct action.