Perhaps the best indicator of this historic shift is the reversal of regional migration flows for blacks, who have been moving into the region in large numbers since 1970. Many of these migrants may be returning to their family roots, but most of them are well educated and are finding employment in the bustling, racially integrated metropolitan areas of the South. Some historians have downplayed the significance of the public accommodations law, which forbade racial discrimination in Southern hotels, restaurants and theaters. Wright points out that local operators were glad to have the decision taken out of local hands. It was a market-enhancing intervention, a simple rule that removed uncertainty and allowed free consumer commerce to flourish.
People also forget how sudden the change was.
On his first trip to the metropolitan area of Raleigh-Durham, N.C., in 1963, he says, most of the buses, restaurants, theaters and hotels were segregated. When he returned in 1966 as a graduate student, all public places were integrated. In between, Congress had passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In hindsight, economists, political scientists and others often imply the civil rights movement was an inevitable, natural outcome of conditions that had been building for a long time. Wright resists this notion.