Moving well beyond the meticulously parsed distinction between natural, civil, political, and social rights, black leaders insistently claimed them all as “immunities” of American citizenship. They disassembled the fraught category of “social rights” into private and intimate personal relations, a matter of individual choice, not law, and a new category, “public rights,” which encompassed equal access to businesses serving the public such as hotels, theaters, streetcars, steamships, and railroads. Throughout the country, these businesses regularly excluded blacks. Though flagrantly violated by
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