Atlanta's Berlin Wall, also known as the Peyton Road Affair or the Peyton Wall, refers to an event during the civil rights movement in Atlanta, Georgia, United States, in 1962. On December 17 of that year, the government of Atlanta, led by mayor Ivan Allen Jr., erected a barricade in the Cascade Heights neighborhood, mostly along Peyton Road, for the purposes of dissuading African Americans from moving into the neighborhood. The act was criticized by many African American leaders and civil rights groups in the city, and on March 1 of the following year the barricade was ruled unconstitutional and removed. The incident is seen as one of the most public examples of white Americans' fears of racial integration in Atlanta. Background Cascade Heights is an affluent neighborhood of Atlanta located in the southwestern part of the city. During the early 1960s, the neighborhood and surrounding area began to undergo a racial transformation as many African Americans began to move into the area. In December 1962, Clinton Warner, a D-Day veteran, civil rights activist, and founding member of the Morehouse School of Medicine, purchased a home in Peyton Forest, a white subdivision in Cascade Heights. The contractor who had sold the house was under financial difficulties at the time and had been unable to find a white buyer for the house. Shortly thereafter, the neighborhood began to experience blockbusting, wherein several of the white homeowners, fearful that more African Americans would move into their neighborhood, began to sell their properties to real estate agents who then sold the property to African Americans at a higher price. Following this, white homeowners in the neighborhood asked Atlanta mayor Ivan Allen Jr. to erect a barricade along Peyton Road and Harlan Road to deter more African Americans from moving into the area. The Atlanta Board of Aldermen approved their request on December 17 and Allen signed it into law later that day, with work on the barricade starting the next day. Rodney Mims Cook Sr. was one of the few aldermen to vote against the barricade. Cook gave an impassioned speech at the Georgia State Capitol against the wall, which, according to his son, led to the Ku Klux Klan burning a cross in his front yard. Following the erection of the barricade, Cook, who was also a member of the Georgia House of Representatives, would introduce a resolution to remove the wall.