King did not stray from the moral imperative of ahimsa, doing no harm.
Moreover, King knew that his civil rights campaign was grounded in the same philosophies that kick-started the union. Locke noted, "All men may be restrained from invading others rights, and from doing hurt to one another,' (Chapter 2, section 7). So long as no harm is done, each individual has the right to act as he or she pleases. King was trying to point out that "all men may be restrained from" harming African-Americans. Discrimination had become part of the American experience. Depriving African-Americans of their rights to vote, to have access to social, political, and economic resources: these are acts that are directly harming human beings. Alluding to the Declaration of Independence, King echoed the passage, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created...
In breaking laws as a form of political protest, King was upholding precisely what Jefferson advised in the Declaration: "That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government." King was not trying to abolish a formal government but an informal system of institutionalized racism. Jefferson states, "it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government." King felt it was his right, his duty, and that of all Americans to throw off the fetters of racism and enter a true era…
