State Action and Civil Rights
By DeLong makes a crucial point about “libertarian” opposition to civil rights law:
When you own a hotel and bar Black people what happens is that if Black people comes in and sleep in the beds you call the police–functionaries of the state–and they then take the Black people away and charge them with trespass. When you own a bus and require Black people to sit in the back and Black people sits in the front you call the police–functionaries of the state–and they then take the Black people away and charge them with trespass. When you own a lunch counter and make it whites-only if Black people sit down at the lunch counter you call the police–functionaries of the state–and they then take the Black people away and charge them with trespass.
Ron Paul’s belief is that the state should assist in amplifying social and political crises and injustices whenever the propertied wish to provoke them.
Holbo makes another crucial, related point: merely getting rid of Jim Crow laws would have been grossly inadequate in terms of getting rid of Jim Crow. Michael Klarman’s book is very good on this, but the Jim Crow laws were largely symbolic, codifying a system of segregation held largely in place through private terror and economic reprisals.