Actually, Rosa Parks didn't have to suffer that. Mrs. DeCuir obtained a $1,000 judgment in the 1870s from a New Orleans court when she was discriminated against by a steamboat operator on the basis of her race (he would not rent her the upstairs "white cabin"), but her verdict was overturned (after being sustained on appeal through the Louisiana Supreme Court) by the United States Supreme Court, which dictated to the Southern states the formula they later enacted to re-institutionalize racial discrimination in a way the Supreme Court explicitly said would pass Constitutional muster.
Given the speed with which we got from the 1964 Act to a Black president, what does this say about the lost opportunity caused by Hall v. DeCuir and the 90 years we lost in the fight for equality, all courtesy of a Supreme Court that claimed the dormant Commerce Clause should be allowed to stop state regulation of morals?
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