American Studies

Civil Disobedience in American Historical Life and Literature

There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love," writes Martin Luther King Junior in his "Letter from Birmingham Jail" from his civil rights era protest text, Why We Can't Wait, originally published in 1963 after the successful Birmingham bus boycott. King wrote his letter to his fellow Christian ministers in the spirit and words of a man deeply disappointed in an America that had repeatedly denied African-Americans the right to be full citizens in supposedly a free and just society. King's disappointment and subsequent acts of civil disobedience had its roots in the ultimate paradox that is at the nature of American political life. America is a society founded upon the rule of law as well as custom. The American Constitution enshrines this nation's belief in justice and the rule of the word as the foundation...
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