The answer is the Continental Congress who reported to KGIII
This means that public services such as bathrooms or water fountains could still be whites only or blacks only but they had to be equal in quality. (i.e the bathroom for whites only could not be very clean and fancy while the blacks only bathroom was dirty).
There were of course several people who held this view, but perhaps the most prominent was Woodrow Wilson, the President of the United States, who pushed for a much more secure Europe after WWI to prevent such things from happening again.
Yes, in general it is true that an important characteristic of civilization is economic activity, since without economic activity it is impossible to trade and grow the economy to the extent that people can develop new skills and trades.
