Most people are quite familiar with the landmark Civil Rights Act, ratified in 1964, along with the Voting Rights act, ratified in 1965. The Civil Rights Act essentially precluded segregation from all places of public accommodation, in addition to creating the legal teeth of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that barred discrimination against employees on the basis of race, religion, national origin, or sex. Additionally, the Voting Rights Act was passed to prohibit literary tests and other assorted restrictions essentially precluding blacks from voting. These new laws were the beginning of the end of State sanctioned discriminatory practices as well as the elimination of overt discrimination in America.
As great as the passage of this above legislature was, history, tells us, that after the North defeated the South in our Civil War, along with the passage of the 13th through 15th Amendments, in and of themselves, this should have created the equality and freedom, that those previously enslaved had been denied, for the 13th Amendment, abolished slavery, the 14th Amendment stipulated that all persons born within America were citizens of America, and the 15th that all citizens had the right to vote. Yet, despite these noble amendments, the effect of these amendments, especially in the southern states, ended up being far short of the desired effect.
Therefore, in 1875, the original Civil Rights Act was passed, which stipulated that all races shall be equal in the face of law, that all races shall be entitled to equal access to all public places, and that all citizens shall be qualified for service as a juror. In 1883, however, the Supreme Court weighed in on this Civil Rights Act, and in a vote of 8-1, effectively nullified that Civil Rights Act, more or less washing their hands of such legislation, by arguing that this Act was unconstitutional. Once that decision was made, Southern State Constitutions were amended in such a way as to deliberately discriminate against blacks so as to take their voting rights away by creating conditions that were discriminatory against blacks, while favoring whites, so that the voting rolls of all Southern States eviscerated from their rolls, the vast majority of blacks, that had won the right to vote, via the 15th Amendment, as the States set forth their own revised rules which negated it.
All of this meant, for the Southern States, who rebelled against their legal government, who first took up arms against their National government, and then made this country to suffer through an incredibly bloody and damaging civil war, that although they lost on the battlefield, that although they lost their institution of slavery, that they would, despite Constitutional Amendments, despite a Civil Rights Act, be able to take those of a different race, and while no longer being able to legally enslave them, to discriminate against such, with almost total impunity within those States, so that enslaved or not, they would be permanently oppressed, in servitude, and treated as a permanent underclass, in fit, form, and function.
This meant, as history has shown, time and time again, that mere words on paper, flowing or not, righteous or not, have no real effect, if the words are not backed by the full faith and power of the National government, that means what it says, and does what it means.