content: Segregation laws mandated separate sections in restaurants for whites and blacks in the South. But this shouldn't puzzle you at all as whites saw going to a restaurant with no blacks as socially desirable. There was a lot more money to be made in servicing this clientele than dirt poor blacks. If whites wanted to make money off of blacks they just owned black restaurants. There was no marke  70dc  t for mixed race restaurants. Forcing blacks on whites, had it even been legal which it wasn't, would just have led to whites taking their business elsewhere.