The Presidents of the late 19th and early 20th centuries did, in contrast to the Supreme Court, have a relatively positive outlook toward the civil rights movement. In his inaugural address, Grover Cleveland stressed the need for equal rights for all, regardless of race; Theodore Roosevelt held talks with the highly influential black leader Booker T. Washington, as did William Taft. However, despite the apparently good intentions of these Presidents, they took very little action on the issue, preferring instead to appease the south by allowing state governments to continue to pass Black Codes and Jim Crow laws. Not only did they feel that to intervene in state affairs in the still-hostile south would be a vote-loser (thanks to state laws preventing African Americans from voting, they did not need to worry about appeasing blacks), but they considered events in the South to be of secondary importance. At this stage, the various Presidents had very little impact on assisting African Americans to gain their civil rights - though at least they did not (except through inaction) make things worse.
This, however, changed when Woodrow Wilson came to power. A Southerner himself, he was very much used to the idea that African Americans were second-class citizens, and held the racist views that were, for him, a cultural norm - and among his first actions on coming to power was to dismiss all African American advisors, and he refused to meet with civil rights leaders of the time - though this was, at least, the least positive standpoint taken by any president. Warren Harding succeeded his presidency, and though not as negative toward civil rights, he remained committed to the idea of letting southern states continue to govern themselves, and did not intervene. An initially more positive reaction came from Calvin Coolidge who, near the beginning of his presidency declared the rights of black citizens as sacred, but then, like the presidents of earlier decades, began to take a much more passive role, and allowed Congress to control all the legislation relating to civil rights for African Americans. This slight movement towards acceptance of the black community did not receive any further pushing from Herbert Hoover, however. His attempt to appoint a judge who was known to be racist to the Supreme Court was successfully opposed by the NAACP, but as President, his views were well known, and he was certainly no friend to the movement. These examples show that even into the 1920s, presidents (even when they personally agreed that African Americans should have equal rights) were still unwilling to bring about change, and despite the growing liberalisation of attitudes in the US regarding the labour unions and women, presidents like Hoover and Wilson, who held racist attitudes continued to be elected - and so during this time frame, the Presidents of the US were of very little help to African Americans struggling to achieve equal civil rights.
In many areas, Franklin D. Roosevelt is considered a "breath of fresh air" to the presidency - and civil rights is no exception. Though he did not initially appear to be a great supporter of the civil rights movement for African Americans, especially given his (understandable) preoccupation with the economy, which meant he had to pander to Southern Democrats in order to win votes that would allow him to bring in New Deal programmes. However, many of these programs did have the knock-on effect of bringing aid to African Americans - by 1935, 30% of black families were receiving relief payments from New Deal programs - a figure proportional to the number of whites at a similar poverty level - in this area at least, they were almost equal, a vital steeping stone on the way to gaining complete equality. However, Roosevelt's most proactive move on Civil Rights came in 1941, when, following a demand to do something by Philip Randolph, he issued an Executive Order that banned racial discrimination in federal government jobs, and set up a committee with the aim of monitoring discrimination within the federal government offices. For this last action alone, Roosevelt deserves to be remembered as an example of the President being able to help African Americans to gain their civil rights.
During the 1920s and 30s, in contrast to their earlier stance, the Supreme Court began to develop a far more positive view on equality for African Americans. A number of cases in the late '10s and early '20s indicated that change was coming, and they began to recognise the illegality of lynchings and of some cases of segregation, and between 1936 and 1941, a series of deaths led to a mass appointment of justices to the Supreme Court by the pro-equality FDR, which in turn led to a very different attitude from the Supreme Court, an attitude that first began to become evident in the 1938 case of Gaines v. Canada, which ruled that where segregation was in force, the facilities provided must be equal. Whilst this did not appear to represent a great divergence from the ruling of Plessy v. Ferguson, it did at least show that the Supreme Court was willing to take a marginally more active stance with regards to civil rights for African Americans, and they were certainly moving away from the unhelpful stance of the Supreme Court in earlier decades.
As the 1940s began, the issue of civil rights and segregation within the armed forces began to become more apparent. As previously mentioned, this prompted Franklin D Roosevelt to issue an executive order to ban segregation within federal employment - and this included within the armed forces. Following Roosevelt's death, his successor, Harry Truman issued further executive orders to fully desegregate the armed forces and commissioned a committee to investigate the state of civil rights in the US, and it issued a report identifying many of the problems present in American society. Unfortunately, however, Truman was unable to persuade a Congress still filled with racist Southern Democrats to adopt any new changes that might have improved things for African Americans in terms of their Civil Rights. There was also a small number of cases taken to the Supreme Court, thanks to the NAACP, but accusations of communism in the new Cold War era were diminishing their power and resources, and so despite a generally more positive feeling towards the movement, little progress was made by the Supreme Court. In this period, it seems that the Presidency had the most impact on helping African Americans to gain civil rights, though the effect of executive orders was limited, in that passing too many would lead to accusations of the President acting as a dictator.
Despite fading into the background somewhat in the 1940s, the Supreme Court made a comeback in terms of making decisions on civil rights in the 1950s. The landmark case was, of course, Brown v. Board of Education, Topeka, Kansas, and it was arguably the turning point in federal government when it came to the rights of African Americans. Dealing primarily with the issue of segregation in schools, the case ruled that it would be unconstitutional to send Linda Brown, the girl for whom the trial is named, to any school other than the one nearest to her, an all-white school. For the first time since Plessy v. Ferguson, the principle of "separate but equal" was challenged, and a new legal precedent was set, one that declared segregation as unconstitutional. Though the enforcement of this case was not strict, it did signal the start of a new era, an era in which other, more liberal still, decisions could be made. This case is the first in which the Supreme Court can be said to have played a truly significant role in helping African Americans to gain their civil rights, but was by no means the last, and only begins to show the importance of the contribution made by the Supreme Court.
Of course, one major result of the Brown case was the (eventual) forced implementation of mixed schools, which, in Little Rock, Arkansas was not as smooth a procedure as many might have hoped. The governor, Governor Faubus used troops from the National Guard to block the entrance to the school, preventing the nine black children who were to attend the school from entering - he claimed this was for their safety, as many of the students were racist. After hearing about this, the president, President Eisenhower sent in federal troops, and put 10000 members of the Arkansas National Guard under federal control, hence the same soldiers who had been keeping the children out of the school on one day were the same ones who ensured their safe entry into the school. This was the only case in which the President felt moved to use his authority to enforce the Supreme Court's decision, but in doing so, he highlighted the biggest failing of the Supreme Court- their virtual inability to self-enforce any decisions that were made.
As the 1950s ended, two Civil Rights Acts (1957 and 1960) were pushed through Congress, one of the few contributions to the furthering of civil rights for African Americans made by Congress during the decade. Both acts were somewhat weak, merely reiterating previous rulings, and setting up committees to investigate civil rights abuses. The weakness of these acts shows the continued influence of racist southern Democrats in Congress - the acts had been somewhat stronger, but would not pass without the support of the southern Democrats, and so the acts were watered down to the point where they became almost meaningless. At this stage, Congress could still not be considered to have any real impact on civil rights for African Americans, primarily because of the aforementioned Congressmen.
On a more positive note, however, the Supreme Court once again came to the forefront of federal government action to aid African Americans to gain their civil rights. The Browder v. Gayle case, which came about because of the Montgomery Bus Boycotts, as led by Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King. In this hugely important decision, the Supreme Court ruled that segregation on buses was illegal, and so dealt another blow to the last remnants of the "separate but equal" philosophy first laid down in Plessy v. Ferguson. This case was followed by the case of Boynton v. Virginia, also dealing with segregation on public transport, and again shows the relative ease with which the Supreme Court could rule against discrimination that affected multiple states at once, dealing as it did with inter-state travel. These rulings helped add steam to the civil rights movement and demonstrate the importance to the cause of the Supreme Court at this time, a Supreme Court that had come a long way from the days in which it would attempt to make obsolete any pro-equality law or act.
These rulings by the Supreme Court also attracted the attention of the president, John F Kennedy, who was still afraid of losing the support of southern whites, but less so than earlier presidents, as he saw the need to keep order, and to enforce those decisions being made by the Supreme Court. Federal agents and soldiers were often made available by Kennedy to ensure that African Americans were able to exercise their new freedoms, and in the run up to his assassination in 1963, Kennedy had begun to draft a Civil Rights Act, which was passed by Johnson in 1964, and which Lyndon B. Johnson followed up with the Voting Rights Bill in 1965. Both of these pieces of legislation required the joint cooperation of President and Congress, and marked a great success for Johnson, who had done the impossible, and created a pro-Civil Rights coalition of Republicans and Democrats, a feat unachieved by any President previously. This period in the 1960s was truly a high for civil rights activists, and the leaps forward were unmatched by any President previously (with the possible exception of Lincoln).
After this high, there had to be a low. The end of the 60s brought with it war in Vietnam, which pushed the issue of civil rights out of the minds of many, and the sudden rush of legislation ended twice as quickly as it had begun. A Fair Housing Act was passed in 1968 by Congress, and this did, in many ways, help end even de facto segregation, by allowing many more African Americans a greater choice of where to live, though many chose to remain in the areas they were born in, the areas where they had friends and family. However, Vietnam had brought with it political ruin for Johnson, and so he chose not to stand for a second time, so despite his incredible personal importance in securing rights for African Americans, his influence was somewhat shortlived.
Johnson's replacement came in the form of Nixon, a considerably less liberal man, who took firm action against the Black Panthers, a new civil rights group who utilised violence as a way of getting their message across. Nixon very much felt that it was a time to pause after the legislature of the previous years, and hence very little happened through him or Congress in terms of civil rights for several years. Despite this apparently negative stance, Nixon did introduce affirmative action in employment, a scheme very much to the tastes of the American public, who had a strong belief in working one's way up the ladder, and in bettering oneself through hard work. Affirmative action was a clear way of showing that African Americans were equal to whites in the workplace, that they could work in the same jobs just as well as one another, and it was intended to provide African American families with the means to live in the same way as their fellow whites. It was declared constitutional too, by the Supreme Court in 1971, and their support of the plan begins to show quite how far they had come from ruling almost entirely against the laws as set out by Congress and the president. Setting this (affirmative action) up was an incredibly important decision, though not quite so landmark as earlier decisions, such as the 1964 Civil Rights Act, but continues to show the importance of Presidential decisions.
A further idea debuted under Nixon was that of bussing. Though considered by some to have been a complete failure, there is no doubt that the motive of integrating schools such that children learned from an early age that there was little difference between blacks and whites was a positive one, and one that showed the importance of Presidential decisions in making sure equality was long term, not merely a short-term phase. Like affirmative action, the Supreme Court upheld bussing as constitutional, though later rulings considered that it was impractical where segregation was unintentional - ie, when a school in a predominantly white neighbourhood had a predominantly white pupil body. Although the scheme ultimately declined, its importance is not entirely negligible, and shows, once more, that the President still had a role to play.
Following Nixon, very little happened under the leadership of Ford and Carter. Whilst neither of them did anything to reverse the moves made forward, neither did anything of any particular note to move civil rights forward either, and so during the late 70s and the beginning of the 80s, the only real changes to civil rights legislation came from the Supreme Court, who began to withdraw from affirmative action - and in some ways, this was an incredibly important decision, as it reduced the likelihood of resentment about African American workers being hired preferentially - had feelings of resentment come to light, this might have stirred deeper racist feeling, and a return to the hostility of the early 20th century.
Finally, through the 80s and 90s, Reagan and Bush Sr. had a dramatic effect on the civil rights movement. Reagan represented the first president in many years with an agenda that included slowing down, and even stopping the moves towards a fully equal society - with his economic cuts leaving many blacks at the very bottom of the poverty ladder. Reagan appointed the fewest African Americans to office since Eisenhower, a move that was very much in line with his view that appointments should be made on merit, not to fill specific quotas, and so his appointment of a conservative judge to the Supreme Court was unsurprising, but it also meant that the Supreme Court was held back in the judgements it could make. Under Reagan, however, Congress remained liberal, and was able to push him to accept strengthening of acts such as the Voting Rights Act when renewing them, a move that shows the importance of Congress not only to the US political system, but also to the civil rights movement at this stage. Right at the end of the period, George Bush Sr. was hardly the greatest advocate of civil rights, and further conservatised the Supreme Court with his appointment of Clarence Thomas, a conservative, black, Republican lawyer. Of greatest importance in this period was most certainly Congress, as despite conservative presidents and an increasingly conservative Supreme Court, they were able to make changes that greatly improved and extended the rights of many blacks.
As is obvious, there was much change over the period in terms of which branch of US federal government was the most important in helping African Americans gain civil rights. Of course, under presidents such as Franklin D. Roosevelt, executive orders were passed which did huge amounts to end segregation in the workplace, not to mention the fact that many of the acts that were passed in the period were passed with the full support, and campaigning of the President in office, however, too many of the presidents were constrained by the fear of losing votes to make any real difference to any great portion of the African American population. Congress, too, did a vast amount, pushing at many times for the extension of civil rights, despite the hostility of the Presidents, and actually passing many of the bills that, ultimately, confirmed the rights of black Americans - and yet too often, Congress was too heavily dominated by white Southern Democrats to really be considered as the most important branch of federal government. Really, the only branch who can claim to be the most important in terms of civil rights is the Supreme Court. Despite an initially negative viewpoint at the beginning of the period, the Supreme Court also ruled some of the most landmark decisions, such as Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, cases that set an entirely new precedent, and allowed the moving forward of the civil rights movement. It did of course have one huge advantage - the appointment of judges who serve for life by different presidents means that the Supreme Court is not so easily swayed by public opinion, and does not make decisions based upon what will win them votes - and so racist white southerners had very little effect on the Supreme Court- which is more than can be said for the other two branches of the federal government.
