<P> With a very small majority in Congress, the president's ability to press ahead with legislation relied considerably on a balancing game with the Senators and Congressmen of the South . Without the support of Vice-President Johnson, a former Senator who had years of experience in Congress and longstanding relations there, many of the Attorney - General's programs would not have progressed . </P> <P> By late 1962, frustration at the slow pace of political change was balanced by the movement's strong support for legislative initiatives, including administrative representation across all U.S. Government departments and greater access to the ballot box . From squaring off against Governor George Wallace, to "tearing into" Vice-President Johnson (for failing to desegregate areas of the administration), to threatening corrupt white Southern judges with disbarment, to desegregating interstate transport, Robert Kennedy came to be consumed by the civil rights movement . He continued to work on these social justice issues in his bid for the presidency in 1968 . </P> <P> On the night of Governor Wallace's capitulation to African - American enrollment at the University of Alabama, President Kennedy gave an address to the nation, which marked the changing tide, an address that was to become a landmark for the ensuing change in political policy as to civil rights . In 1966, Robert Kennedy visited South Africa and voiced his objections to apartheid, the first time a major US politician had done so: </P> <P> At the University of Natal in Durban, I was told the church to which most of the white population belongs teaches apartheid as a moral necessity . A questioner declared that few churches allow black Africans to pray with the white because the Bible says that is the way it should be, because God created Negroes to serve . "But suppose God is black", I replied . "What if we go to Heaven and we, all our lives, have treated the Negro as an inferior, and God is there, and we look up and He is not white? What then is our response?" There was no answer . Only silence . </P>

Who was involved in the civil rights movement in america