People don't realize the extent to which the cooperation of business interests generally drives social change. Desegregation would have happened regardless, but it probably happened somewhat sooner thanks to corporations seeing the benefits of selling their products to black consumers.
Segregation as a system was also a barrier to outside investment into many of the Southern states and thus created a "Northern business community impulse" to break segregation, to open up the South to new business opportunities.
This would in part explain the vast support for desegregation in the 50s and early 60s, as well as why this support for civil rights was pulled back in the later parts of the 60s, once they got what they most desired out of the situation.
