Libertarian law professor Richard Epstein has a blog post up at Forbes on free markets and racial exploitation in the South:
The entire system of segregation has, in some quarters, been grotesquely treated as though it were some form of market system, when in fact it was anything but. The key feature of a market system is ease of entry and exit, which puts pressure on all economic players....As a libertarian, the central lesson to learn from this disgraceful historical episode is that free entry and free exit are the cheapest and most powerful ways to combat segregation.
The review of Cotton and Race in the Making of America is also worth a read for those interested in the topic of racism and capitalism.