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# Thoreau Challenges Justice with His Essay "Civil Disobedience"
- URL: https://www.cascadepbs.org/show/henry-david-thoreau/extras/thoreau-challenges-justice-with-his-essay-civil-disobedience-xo7xnf/
- Published: 2026-03-25T19:00:37.000Z
- Updated: 2026-05-14T21:57:07.000Z
- Description: Thoreau's refusal to support what he saw as injustice culminates in his essay "Civil Disobedience."
- Author: Cascade PBS Staff
- Tags: Henry David Thoreau, #ZZZ_Show_2a95fc7a-ed85-4cbe-86a3-654f60762917, #geo-us, #v1.7, #ZZZ_Extra_4ef2e6b3-644c-4062-9c6d-6935e2d4c1d3, #extra

After refusing to pay four years of poll taxes, Thoreau is briefly imprisoned. Thoreau is adamantly opposed to supporting a state that is involved in enslavement and wars of aggression. Thoreau begins to write in earnest about society's obligations to freedom and justice culminating in the essay "Civil Disobedience," which influences the later work of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and Gandhi