After Martin Luther King, Jr., won the Noble Peace Prize in 1964, his hometown, Atlanta, Georgia, decided to host a gala dinner in his honor. However, many of Atlanta’s white elite initially declined to go, and the mayor feared the event would be an embarrassment to the city. Coca-Cola’s CEO stepped in, saying that, if Atlanta could not honor a Nobel Prize winner properly, then he would be forced to move his company elsewhere. The dinner quickly sold out.