Black History Month: Debunking the 10 biggest myths about black history

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5. There were other ways to end segregation besides a civil rights movement (Rand Paul saying the free market would have ended it. Chris Christie says a referendum could have.)

Presidential candidate Ron Paul opposes the 1964 Civil Rights Act on the grounds that it infringed on the right of business owners and threatened privacy. Paul believes that we should have left it to the free market to end segregation. Paul ignores the historical circumstances surrounding Jim Crow. The free market at that time supported segregation for African-Americans, and slavery before it, which was backed up by state officials, state laws and local ordinances, and a regime of violence by the Klan and other terrorist groups. These forces had no intention of budging from their position, as Frederick Douglass once said, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”

It took a civil rights movement to apply pressure on Congress and President Johnson and force the Southern states to change their ways. This meant legislation by the federal government forbidding discrimination in public places, schools, the workplace and the voting booth.