In the south there was an extreme nature of discrimination, as if its been in peoples families for many generations, they feel discrimination is the only correct way to live. We know this by the police supporting the KKK; they never went after anyone in the KKK or prosecuted anyone for murders or discrimination of coloured people even if illegal. In the south there was a racial etiquette which continued in the south for many many years. The white the white citizen’s council got 250000 members. The police supporting the KKK is very extraordinary, the police are meant to protect and respect all citizens no matter what their race or religion. So with them going against the blacks and letting the KKK do that shows that the civil rights campaigns are extremely diminished by southern politicians and there states laws. The racial etiquette was the way that black people had to treat whites and vice versa, the African Americans weren’t able to call a white person, Mr or Mrs. They also wasn’t able to eat in a white family’s kitchen. With this continuing well into the 1950’s showed that the north and Truman’s policies weren’t succeeding in eliminating segregation.
The southern politicians tried extremely hard to become president and appose Truman’s civil rights policies, Truman’s policies weren’t perfect either. The Dixiecrats opposed all of Truman’s reforms, Strum Thurmond ran against Truman in the 1948 election. Southern democrats in congress voted against Truman’s policies. The to secure these rights policies only highlighted problems. The brown v. board southern manifesto had been signed but it wasn’t all t was hoped to be. With strum Thurmond opposing Truman, he felt a lot of pressure from the north as they wanted these reforms. The ‘to secure these rights act’ only highlighted the problems of segregation, they never actively pursued any of the solutions due to the southern pressure. After the brown v. board manifesto was signed, soon after they realised that the agreed terms were not actually put into action so they only got a de jure victory, all of these points cause politicians to be a huge impact of the failures in securing the rights.
The legal factors in the change only caused multiple de jure victories with a few tiny de facto victories. Plessy vs. Ferguson was overturned I the serious of decisions, the sweet vs. panter allowed the coloured student to the white only law school. The Morgan vs. Virginia ended the segregation on interstate busses between the north and south states. The victories gained by the African Americans in the legal part of the Morgan vs. Virginia, Plessy vs. Ferguson and sweet vs. panter are only very tiny de facto victories that didn’t help in any way to the devastating truth that segregation actually was.
In conclusion, the legal factors were all victories although only small they still aided in the victory and therefore were in no way a part of the failure of the civil rights campaign in 1945 – 55, the nature of discrimination in the south meant that changing the way people saw the lives of African Americans in comparison of the lives of non coloured would be extremely hard and aided in the failure as they would constantly fight for segregation. In the protests that were held out by the campaigners was very ineffective and therefore was a large part to the failure of the campaign. Another large failure was the politics and the presidency as because of southern pressure Truman couldn’t carry out any of his policies. In my opinion the main reason is the presidency, this is because of the power he had to change but then decided not to because of lack of funding and alot of pressure caused him to fail at making his policies work.