One could say Henry David Thoreau's Civil Disobedience inspired Martin Luther King's Letter from Birmingham Jail. Indeed king "was so deeply moved that (he) re-read the work several times. (He) became convinced then that non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good."" However, history shows that, due to differing social context, rhetorical style, and personal involvement, King outdid his inspiration.
First available in 1849 in only issue of the periodical Aesthetic Papers, Civil Disobedience entertained an audience, albeit a very limited one, among abolitionists, but Thoreau's essay, originally a lecture, wasn't widely published until 1863, after his death and during the height of the civil war. It wasn't Thoreau's Civil Disobedience or the abolitionists influenced by it that ended slavery. It was a civil war that killed at least 618,000 Americans. On the contrary, civil rights movement, justified in King's Letter from Birmingham Jail, secured the repeal of segregation laws and unfair voting restrictions. It secured them through nonviolent protest: lunch counter sit-ins, marches, and boycotts "precisely the civil disobedience advocated by Thoreau, and later King. .
More receptive audiences and a smaller relative target helped King have more effect then Thoreau. While King was trying to change a long standing institution, segregation, it was a cultural institution; desegregation and black voting rights were controversial, but they had no economic consequences. On the other hand, Thoreau's target, slavery, was the defining institution of the south. Everyone with power was economically dependent upon its continued existence. In the 1950s and 60s, white southerners stood to lose a monopoly on political power. In the 1850s and 60s, white southerners stood to lose millions in property and a way of life. .
Letter from Birmingham Jail is a direct attack on particular of way of thinking.
