What's Civil Disobedience?

  Civil disobedience is the refusal to obey certain laws, demands, and commands of a government through nonviolent resistance. An example of civil disobedience in the civil rights movement was when African Americans refused to sit in the back of the bus, boycotted, and were beaten because they sat at the wrong table or drank out of the wrong drinking fountain. They did this through nonviolent protests and resistance. Civil disobedience was effective because African Americans were getting beaten for doing nothing and people were reading this in the news and this started the civil rights movement. An example of this was the open casket funeral of Emmit Till.