“Jim Crow” (as well as slavery) were the result of state action. Under the English common law (applicable to all states except Louisiana), discrimination was prohibited since someone in business had a duty to serve the entire public. The legislature needed to authorize or mandate discrimination. Similarly slavery was banned in England absent a statute authorizing it (which Parliament refused to pass, which is why in the English quivalent of “Dred Scott”, a slave from America who had been brought to English was declared free by virtue of the fact he was in England). In the United States, the Civil rights law simply preempted the states’ preemption of common law. How important the civil rights law was in ending discrimination against Jews is questionable since by 1964 most (non-Jewish) Americans already regarded anti-semitism as being very un-American (since in all fairness, Hitler gave anti-semitism a bad name among Americans, and religious discrimination was always regarded as un-American going back to the Revolution).
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