The barricade was seen as part of a larger effort by Allen to prevent "encroachment and penetration" into white neighborhoods of southwest Atlanta, and months earlier, Allen had vetoed a proposal to establish an African American cemetery near Westview Cemetery in the area. Along with the barricade, Allen intended to rezone about of commercial land north of Peyton Forest to serve as a residential area for African Americans. This land, which was mostly unused, was previously being used as a "racial barrier". The barricade The "wall" was a short barricade, about tall, made of wood and steel. Almost immediately after the barricade was erected, the African American community in Atlanta began to voice their disapproval of the structure. Some newspapers in the city called it "Atlanta's Wall," and black Atlantans referred to it as "Atlanta's Berlin Wall". The reference to Berlin was especially poignant to Allen, who had said in his inaugural address, “It was in Berlin that the tragic and dramatic lesson of what happens to a divided city came home to me.” Protesters continued to evoke the image of postwar Europe with protest sayings such as, "We want no Warsaw Ghetto – open Peyton Road." According to historian Paul M. Farber, these efforts sought to link racial segregation in the United States to "Cold War division" and "Holocaust trauma." African Americans led a boycott in West End, Atlanta, avoiding businesses in the area that supported the barricade, and picketing occurred at Atlanta City Hall. The Committee on Appeal for Human Rights (COAHR), the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and Atlanta's Committee for Cooperative Action (ACCA) formed a committee to coordinate efforts to protest the barricade. A statement signed by Martin Luther King Sr. and the president of the Atlanta chapter of the NAACP, among others, called the barricade "one of Atlanta's gravest mistakes and a slap at our national creed of democracy and justice." In a December 22 letter sent by the COAHR to Allen, they describe the opposition to the wall by Atlanta University students and pledge to continue to picket the West End neighborhood and stage largescale demonstrations at the wall. In a telegram sent the next day, Allen stated that he had assembled a committee to look into the situation regarding the wall. Following this, SNCC chair James Forman staged a publicity stunt where he met with a white resident of Cascade Heights at the