Civil Rights Act

Yesterday we learned about the importance of the 14th amendment and how many people were either for or against it. Mostly the southern states were against it because they still wanted to have slaves while most of the Northern states wanted slaves to have more freedom. Lincoln during his presidency wanted to have a democratic vice president to show that republicans and democrats can all work together harmoniously and so he was assassinated, his democratic vice president, Andrew Johnson took office. After Johnson took office, it was him versus a republican congress. Johnson supported the actions of the southern states because he himself was from the south had owned slaves himself. The republican congress wasn't happy that the president vetoed the Civil Rights Act and so they overrided his veto, making the civil rights act into a law. The Civil Rights Act was supposed to be used in order to give African Americans equal access to public accommodations without any regard to race and the African Americans thought that something might come out of it. That they would finally be treated equally, however the laws were violated constantly and 5 different cases have set the standard that states have to enforce the law in public situations, but at private discretion they can be. It is very hard for people to follow laws if they are not enforced that and if there is no punishment for a set crime, then people have no incentive to follow it. I think that this was the case when the Civil Rights Act was made into a law because many of the people that believed in white supremacy disobeyed the law. It is possible to enforce a law, but it's almost nearly impossible to change someone's opinion unless they, of their own accord, do it themself.