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Abstract

This thesis examines Martin Luther King, Jr.’s constitutional appeals during the period between the Montgomery Movement (1955) and the Memphis Sanitation Workers’ Strike (1968). Recent accounts of civil disobedience within the civil rights movement have challenged the paradigmatic liberal framework of considering civil disobedience as an institution-affirming practice by emphasizing the anticolonial framework in which nonviolent resistance emerged. As I argue, such accounts do not fully grapple with the ways in which King appealed to the language of the Constitution for purposes other than conveying rights-based claims to the political majority. I offer an alternative interpretation that begins with the specific pedagogical purposes of King’s constitutional appeals within the Montgomery Movement and retraces how King mobilized the language of extant principles and documents throughout the course of his political career. I argue that King’s constitutional rhetoric worked to activate a radical participatory vision of democratic citizenship and establish a robust ethical connection between the domestic struggles for equal citizenship with transnational anticolonial movements.

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