As for the incident itself, I would imagine if the US had a black President and segrigation at the same time the President would be a major opponent of segregation. I could certainly see him going to a segregated restaurant to make in order to deliberately provoke an incident/make a point.
I had a similar idea about this.
The president dies or is assassinated.
The VP, President Pro Tem and Speaker of the House are fairly old/don't want to be president.
The Secretary of State doesn't want to be President.
The Secretary of Treasury is black, or has fairly dark skin so he's perceived as black. (Maybe his ancestors are from India, Indonesia, etc.
So the first few resign their positions in order to have the succession devolve to the Secretary of Treasury (or whichever person in line is black.)
They do this in order to, as Chengar suggested, deliberately provoke an incident and bring the Civil Rights Movement Crisis to an end.
This could be during a much more violent Civil Rights movement, and the administration wants to do something drastic. Maybe the president doesn't die in office, but he's unpopular and resigns and agrees with the men in the line of succession that the black person in his cabinet will become president and provoke this incident.
There'd be other reasons, too, of course--he'd be capable and qualified to do the other things a president needs to do.
I had another idea for this.
The Changing The Times site had a timeline where the 1968 election is a draw, and nobody agrees on who won. Two of the candidates were Walter Cronkite and his running mate, Coretta Scott King. So suppose those two are elected and Coretta goes into a restaurant...
(Or Cronkite dies, King becomes president and visits the South...)
I just did a search for it and Changing the Times doesn't seem to be there any more.


