The civil rights movement could not have succeeded in the streets of the south without legislative help from the bureaucrats in Washington D.C. The laws of America did not have to be changed in order for blacks to receive equal rights, but they did have to be clarified and enforced. The beginning of this legislative process was when Harry Truman integrated the American armed forces in 1948. He did this based upon the recommendations of a committee on civil rights, which he had established in 1946. Although Truman was granted the power to wipe out racial discrimination in the 14th and 15th amendments, which had been passed back in the 1860's, he chose not to use this power and let racial discrimination continue.
The next legislative step for ending discrimination was the Supreme Court Case, Brown v. Board of Education. This Supreme Court case said that the old policy of "separate but equal" public schools was illegal, as it never brought equality to the blacks. Although the courts called for integration of public schools, it took at least a decade for desegregation to occur, and in many places it still hasn't. .
The next step along the legislative process towards equality occurred in 1956, when the Supreme Court outlawed segregation on local bus lines. This piece of legislation was in response to the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott. This boycott had begun in 1955, when Mrs. Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a city bus to a white man. Blacks and whites also protested segregation on public buses by going on "freedom rides," where Blacks and whites would ride interstate buses together in protest over segregationist policies of many of the bus line operators.
As blacks continued to protest their lack of equal rights, they received very little support from the federal government. Blacks were routinely beaten, jailed, and killed in the south for attempting to gain equal rights.