The Domestication of Henry David Thoreau

Abstract

Henry David Thoreau’s essay on civil disobedience is said to have influenced Mohandas K. Gandhi’s nonviolent campaign for Indian rights in South Africa, and subsequent drive for Indian independence, which in turn is thought to have inspired Martin Luther King, Jr.’s direction of the American Civil Rights Movement. In this chapter I reverse that genealogy, showing that King construed elements of satyagraha in ways that served the political agenda of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, while playing down aspects of satyagraha that did not fit the American case or even clashed with Judeo-Christian themes that were important within the American movement.

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