Practice Together
Read the following passage aloud. As you read, listen for clues that help you identify cause-and-effect relationships. Remember that effects often become new causes.
When he was a young man, Mohandas Gandhi worked as a lawyer in South Africa, where many people from India lived and worked. He thought the laws there treated Indians unfairly and often harshly. Gandhi reasoned that if a law was unjust, then it was OK to break that law. He therefore urged people to break unfair laws. Indians followed his advice. As a result, South Africa changed its laws and gave Indians more rights.
When Gandhi returned to India, he saw unfair laws there. So he began to lead peaceful protests in India. Consequently, the laws in India changed, too.
Gandhi helped change unfair laws in South Africa in the early 1900s.
Try It!
Read the following passage aloud. What are the causes and effects? How do you know?
Henry David Thoreau is a famous American writer of the nineteenth century. He wrote that if each person acts peacefully against an unfair law, then the law eventually would be changed.
Mohandas Gandhi read Thoreau’s essays and agreed with them. Therefore, he used the ideas in his fight for civil rights.
Later, because of Thoreau and Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., led peaceful protests in the United States. He encouraged African Americans to protest against unfair laws. These protests led to new laws that were more fair.
The ideas of Thoreau inspired Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.