The night of MLK’s murder, the Mayor of Atlanta drove into the majority black neighborhoods and business district without security escort. He stood on the roof of his car and pleaded with the growing angry crowds not to harm their neighborhoods and black-owned businesses, proclaiming that these had nothing to do with MLK’s killing. The mayor single-handedly stopped a riot from taking place, avoiding an altercation with armed police, and the destruction of innocents’ property. Ivan Allen, Jr was an educated, upper middle class white man who ended segregated public buildings and facilities and helped to make Atlanta a peaceful center of the civil rights movement.