Yesterday the Twitters were aflame after the Washington Post published a disturbing op-ed by a former cop. In response to the uproar about police violence against black people amidst the struggle in Ferguson, Missouri, the former cop wrote:

[H]ere is the bottom line: if you don’t want to get shot, tased, pepper-sprayed, struck with a baton or thrown to the ground, just do what I tell you.

Last night I started reading Gilbert King's "Devil in the Grove", a book about how Thurgood Marshall risked his life—before he was famous—to litigate civil rights cases in the dangerous and bloody south during the 1940s and 50s. One of the first stories in the book describes how Marshall's friend disobeyed a police order and in so doing, saved the man who would become a Supreme Court justice from being lynched by police. Prison Culture excerpts the story on her blog.

Civil disobedience—the refusal to obey a police order—saved Thurgood Marshall's life. Someone should tell the Washington Post.