In the aftershock outside, Mayor Hartsfield worked diligently to dissociate his city from the De Kalb proceedings. “I have made requests of all the news agencies that in their stories they make it clear that this hearing did not take place in Atlanta, Georgia,” he announced. Governor Vandiver’s press spokesman, on the other hand, warmly praised Judge Mitchell’s decision. “I think the maximum sentence for Martin Luther King might do him good,” he said, “might make a law-abiding citizen out of him and teach him to respect the law of Georgia.”
