Brando said …”At that time, in many if not most parts of the country the discrimination against blacks was so widespread that there simply weren’t reasonable options for blacks–many towns would have no restaurant catering to them, or jobs available to them, and the discriminating businessmen would argue–not unreasonably–that even if they wanted to serve blacks, they would do so at the risk of losing far more white customers who’d object. The free market could not in the near future correct the racial discrimination problem naturally.”
That is simply false. Discrimination was required by law. It would have been entirely possible for the CRA to simply eliminate the legal apparatus of discrimination, by regulating the actions of governments, without impairing the rights of private citizens to make use of their property as they saw fit. There is no way of knowing what this might have accomplished, because it was never tried.