Unlearned Hand blogs about the debate over the role of government in promoting and sustaining Jim Crow. He gives a fair summary of my position, as well as the position of my friend Mike Klarman, Hand's professor at U. Va. I should note however, that the dispute between Klarman and myself is relatively narrow: we both agree that government economic regulation was only one of a web of factors that created and sustained Jim Crow, and we both acknowledge that social prejudice and informal (extralegal violence) were important factors as well. My argument is that the role of economic regulation has been overlooked by mainstream historians, not that it was the sole cause of Jim Crow, and that social pressure by itself, unaccompanied by both regulation and government complicity in violence, would not have led to a draconian racial caste system. I do my best to disclaim any notion that my research directly impacts the debate over modern civil rights laws; some could argue that my research supports the view there is less need for them then is generally assumed,* but others coud argue that it shows the government has a special responsibility to make up for its past misdeeds. My papers on this and related subjects can be found here (see especially the Buchanan v. Warley paper) [UPDATE: My mistake, the Buchanan paper isn't on the web. An abstract can be found here, and the paper is available on Westlaw, Lexis, or Hein Onlin.] My related book, on labor laws and not Jim Crow per se, can be found here. Klarman's great book (haven't read it yet, but have read the articles on which it is largely based) can be found here.

*The government's complicity in Jim Crow also really destroys the libertarian argument that the 1964 Civil Rights Act should have solely prohibited the government from engaging in discrimination, and allowed private parties to do what they wish. Private and public discrimination were so entwined in the South that this would simply have allowed public-sponsored discrimination to go on, but informally ("keep segregating your restaurant, or you might have trouble at your zoning permit renewal hearing")--it would have been impossible for the feds to go after the various subtle kinds of publicly sponsored and enforced discrimination that would have continued.