> There's actually no point in time where the opinions of the actual proprietors of lunch counters mattered either way. The Jim Crow laws legally mandated segregation until the Civil Rights Act legally prohibited it.

I’m sorry, but what do you think provided the political impetus for the Civil Rights Act? It was years of concerted protesting and civil disobedience, one form of which was sit-ins at lunch counters.

But they weren't protesting the proprietors of those businesses for complying with the law. They were protesting the law itself.

> But they weren't protesting the proprietors of those businesses for complying with the law.

Yes, they were. The Greensboro sit-ins began at Woolworth stores because they had explicit policies that went above and beyond those required by Jim Crow laws. They even sent a letter to Woolworth’s, not the state[1].

Edit: And, you’ll note: the Greensboro sit-ins didn’t provoke asymmetric police retaliation. What the students did wasn’t even illegal, it was merely against Woolworth’s store policies.

[1]: https://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/content/greensboro-nc-stud...