#1 Dr. Martin Luther King Speaks on the Necessity of Civil Disobedience https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkT57M4fo7o (Wickert) Dr. King you said a moment ago that Alabama was a state that gives respectability to the resistance and defiance of the law. You listed an observance of the law by local agencies in the south as one of the cardinal aims that you are seeking Yet, on March the 9th, you led the second march on Montgomery in a violation of a Federal injunction not to march. You said that order was unjust. John Lewis one of your colleagues said that the negroes had a constitutional right to march—injunction or no injunction. Now, was that in keeping with the spirit of nonviolence and the restraint that has always characterized your movement? Could you explain your reasoning in defying the court order that day? 1 (MLK) Well, let me say two things to that, Mr. Wickert. First, I did not consider myself defying a court order that particular day. I consulted with my attorneys before the march. They stated that they felt that it was an invalid order and that it would not be … that I would not be in contempt of court of violating the court order if I led the march to the point of having a moral confrontation with the state troopers at the point where the people were brutalized on Sunday. So, I still don’t consider that braking a court order of what I consider an unjust law. On the other hand, I must be honest enough to say, that I do feel that there are two types of laws. One is a just law and one is an unjust law. I think we all have a moral obligations to obey just laws. On the other hand, I think we have moral obligations to disobey unjust laws because noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. I think the distinction here is that when one brakes a law that conscience tells him is unjust he must do it openly, he must do it cheerfully, he must do it lovingly, he must do it civilly not uncivilly, and he must do it with a willingness to accept the penalty. Any man who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail in order to arouse the conscience of the community on the injustice of the law is at that moment expressing the very highest respect for law. #2 Dr. Martin Luther King Speaks on the Necessity of Civil Disobedience https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkT57M4fo7o 1 (Wickert) Well, I can, I can sympathize with a good deal of that but it seems to me you get into a very difficult point here at which one man’s conscience is set in fact above the conscience of society which is which has invoked the law. How are we to enforce law when a doctrine has preached that one man’s conscience may tell him the law’s unjust when other men’s conscience don’t tell them that? 2 (MLK) I think you enforce it. I think you deal with it by not allowing anarchy to develop. I do not believe in defying the law as many of the segregationists do. I do not believe in evading the law as many of the segregationists do. The fact is that most of the segregationists and racists that I see are not willing to suffer enough for their beliefs in segregation and they are not willing to go to jail. I think the chief norm for guiding the situation is a willingness to accept the penalty. I don’t think any society can call an individual irresponsible who breaks a law and willingly accepts the penalty if conscience tells him that that law is unjust. I think that this is a long tradition in our society. It’s a long tradition in biblical history. Meshach and Abednego broke an unjust law and they did it because they had to be true to a higher moral law of the early Christians who practiced civil disobedience in a superb manner. Academic freedom would not be a reality today if it had not been for Socrates and if it had not been Socrates’s willingness to practice civil disobedience. I would say that in our own history there’s nothing that expresses massive civil disobedience any more than the Boston Tea Party. Yet, we give this to our young people and our students as a part of the great tradition of our nation. So, I think we are in good company when we break unjust laws. I think those who are willing to do it and accept the penalty are those who are part of the saving of the nation.
Purchase answer to see full attachment