Henry David Thoreau was an American essayist, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, and historian, two of his greatest works are: "Resistance to Civil Government" (also known as "Civil Disobedience") and "The Mask of Anarchy". His ideals can be summarized by this statement: “the Government should not have more power than the bestowed by its citizens”.
Henry David Thoreau was even imprisoned for refusing to pay taxes in protest for the Mexican-American War and the slavery.
In the following quotation from the excerpt from <em>"john lewis's walking with the wind" </em>we can see the influence of Thoreau at its best:
"But he also urged the black man to fight back in self-defense—"by any means necessary," as he famously put it. and i just could not accept that?"