On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a Black seamstress, was on a bus after an intense day at work. She was seated in the middle of the bus, and a few stops later a White man demanded a seat. The bus driver asked her and three other black customers to move, but Parks refused and the bus driver threatened to call the police; her response to his threat is, "Go ahead and call them" ("Rosa Parks"1). This incident is influenced by a man, Henry David Thoreau, who wrote Civil Disobedience. In Thoreau's writing, he affirms individual conscience and advocates nonviolent acts of political resistance to protest unjust government policy. Thoreau himself follows his principles when he refuses to pay taxes that would be used to finance a government that supports slavery and the Mexican War, two issues that are against his conscience. His actions and his writing, Civil...