Eldrin Bell was cruising into Buckhead when the call came. Martin Luther King Jr. had been shot in Memphis. All detectives were to report downtown.

Back at Atlanta police headquarters, Bell's commander, Clinton Chafin, told his men exactly what was expected of them. "This is Martin Luther King's hometown," he said. "We cannot allow it to go up in flames."

Bell was dispatched to the Atlanta University Center, where he steered angry students back to campus and responded to several incidents of vandalism in nearby neighborhoods. "I rode the streets all night," remembers the former detective, now chairman of the Clayton County Commission. "We did a lot of behind-the-scenes work."

Forty years ago this week, Atlanta did not burn. No one died in civil unrest. No troops had to be called out. In one of few reports of property damage, someone firebombed the Southside offices of the United Klans of America.

Other cities were not so fortunate.

Within hours of King's assassination, on April 4, 1968, rioting broke out in Memphis and Washington. Violence soon flared up in more than 100 cities across the nation. By the time the fires burned out five days later, 43 people had died and some 55,000 troops had been deployed to restore order.

For six days in April, culminating in the biggest funeral the city has ever seen, Atlanta remained relatively peaceful. It was one of the defining moments in the city's history, and it didn't happen by accident.

Thursday, April 4

Mayor Ivan Allen Jr. was watching the evening news at home in Buckhead when the bulletin was broadcast. He phoned Coretta Scott King, who had already heard, and said he would send a police car to take her to the airport. Then he drove to her home in Vine City, thinking along the way that he wouldn't blame them if some in Atlanta's black community lashed out in rage.

At the airport, Allen confirmed to Mrs. King that her husband had died. She went home to be with her children. He went to City Hall.

Before long, the mightiest corporate chieftain in town, Coca-Cola Chairman Robert Woodruff, called from Washington with some advice.

"The minute they bring King's body back tomorrow —- between then and the time of the funeral —- Atlanta, Ga., is going to be the center of the universe," Woodruff told the mayor. "I want you to do whatever is right and necessary, and whatever the city can't pay for will be taken care of. Just do it right."

The blank check wasn't needed. Two others would step in and help cover funeral expenses: actor Harry Belafonte, a close friend of the Kings', and Sen. Robert Kennedy, who sent staffers to handle arrangements and a private jet for Mrs. King's use. Kennedy had two months to live before he, too, would be assassinated.

In Memphis that night, Hosea Williams, one of King's lieutenants in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, heard the sirens and saw TV reports of the cascading violence. He phoned The Atlanta Constitution and pleaded that the proper way to honor King was to remain peaceful.

Williams had more pointed words for his staff.

"If they riot and burn in Atlanta, we're going to be blamed," he told Tyrone Brooks, a young organizer who went on to become a state representative. "It would be a tremendous blow to Dr. King's legacy."

At SCLC headquarters on Auburn Avenue, Terrie Randolph, a secretary, was answering phones when she noticed a boy walk in with a brick in his hand. She recognized him from her neighborhood.

"He was angry. We were all angry," Randolph says. "But we felt that we had to put that out of our minds and continue Dr. King's commitment to nonviolence. So we talked to this boy, and he put down the brick. I think people were looking to us for cues about how to react."

Friday, April 5

Stoney Cooks, an SCLC staffer, had been in Washington on Thursday night and had watched the riots there burn out of control. He caught a plane for Atlanta on Friday morning and was struck by the contrasting mood. "It was much quieter," he says. "People seemed to be stunned."

Many of them were just being respectful.

"To have violence in his hometown would have been such a desecration," says Xernona Clayton, a TV personality and friend of the Kings'. "That was the mood: 'We're not going to have it.' "

That morning, as Mrs. King flew to Memphis to claim her husband's body, students at the AU Center gathered in a rainstorm for a memorial march. Mayor Allen hurried to the campus and asked to lead them. The students refused —- "This is a black people's march," one of them told him —- but the mayor took part anyway, riding ahead of the column in his car.

That night, Allen and Police Chief Herbert Jenkins rode through black neighborhoods into the wee hours, talking to residents.

Saturday, April 6

The morning paper carried a full-page sympathy ad from Rich's department store. Eight years before, Rich's had had King arrested for trying to desegregate its downtown restaurant, the Magnolia Room.

Late that afternoon, King's body was taken to Sisters Chapel at Spelman College for a public viewing. Before the doors opened, the family was allowed a private moment. Martin Luther King Sr. —- Daddy King —- broke down in sobs and had to be led away.

Throughout the weekend, the SCLC sent people through the city to defuse tensions. They visited campuses, stopped by nightspots, hit the black radio stations, stood on street corners talking through bullhorns and leading freedom songs.

"We were like ambassadors," says Tyrone Brooks. "We went to the AU Center, Buttermilk Bottom, Summerhill, West End, Vine City. We were everywhere."

Sunday, April 7

In pulpits across Atlanta, ministers spoke about King and the passions his death had unleashed. The most personal message came from Ralph David Abernathy, King's successor as head of the SCLC, who read an open letter to his best friend at West Hunter Street Baptist Church. Rioters, he said, were acting out of frustration and were just trying to say, "He died for us."

The basement of Abernathy's church had become a beehive of funeral planning. By Sunday, it was obvious that many more than the 10,000 mourners originally expected would be coming. Dozens of chartered planes and buses were headed for Atlanta. Hotels were booked.

Downtown churches prepared with food and cots for anyone who couldn't find a room. Volunteers descended offering to help.

"I had never seen so many white people on Auburn Avenue," says Tom Houck, then an SCLC organizer.

Monday, April 8

Mrs. King flew to Memphis to lead the march her husband had planned to lead in support of striking garbage collectors.

Meanwhile, back in Atlanta, a controversy erupted when Lester Maddox arrived at the Capitol to find flags at half-staff. The segregationist governor was furious and instructed Secretary of State Ben Fortson to raise them. He refused, explaining that President Lyndon B. Johnson had declared a time of national mourning.

Maddox charged onto the Capitol grounds to raise the flags himself but retreated when he saw TV cameras pointed at him.

Across the street at City Hall, Mayor Allen ordered liquor stores and nightclubs closed through Wednesday morning. The Playboy Club placed a newspaper ad announcing it would close in memory of King, not mentioning that it couldn't have opened if it had wanted to.

Tuesday, April 9

A crush of mourners descended on Ebenezer Baptist Church, where the first of two services would be held.

The famous filed into the small sanctuary: politicians (Robert Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Hubert Humphrey, Nelson Rockefeller), political widows (Jacqueline Kennedy, Betty Shabazz), actors (Marlon Brando, Bill Cosby), singers (Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder), athletes (Jackie Robinson, Wilt Chamberlain).

A few minutes before the program started, Stokely Carmichael, a black militant who had been implicated in the Washington riots, pushed his way into the church and approached Mrs. King. Thinking he wanted to bring his "Burn, baby, burn" provocations to Atlanta, she quietly reprimanded him.

"Stokely," she said, "Martin wouldn't want you to do that."

The eeriest moment of the service came when one of King's recent sermons was played in the sanctuary and over loudspeakers outside. Two months before his death, King had preached his own eulogy at Ebenezer. Now his words rang down Auburn Avenue: "Say that I was a drum major for justice ..."

Like many reporters, Kathryn Johnson of The Associated Press had expected trouble. She changed her mind when she saw the throng. "It was obvious to me that the mood was more sad than angry. People brought their children dressed in their Sunday best. You don't do that if you're expecting violence."

After the service, King's casket of African mahogany was loaded onto a farm wagon pulled by two Georgia mules, a symbol of his concern for poor people. In his final march, thousands of mourners would walk with the body as it was taken across town from the street of his ministry to the campus of his youth.

The river of humanity —- 150,000 people, by some estimates —- stretched 4.3 miles from Ebenezer to Morehouse College. Except for singing, it was quiet for such a large crowd.

"People were standing on roofs and perched in trees. You'd have thought the Good Lord had come," recalls Eldrin Bell, who worked the procession with the police. "I remember looking out on all those people —- black and white —- and thinking heaven must look like this."

The procession made its way past the state Capitol, where Gov. Maddox, fearful that militants would storm the building, had called out 160 state police to protect the grounds. Then it passed City Hall, which was draped in black bunting, and continued along Hunter Street, later to be renamed Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

There were more eulogies in another service at Morehouse. Then the cortege traveled by car to South-View Cemetery in southeast Atlanta, where King's body was entombed until a permanent resting place could be built on Auburn Avenue.

It had been seven hours since the funeral had begun, but the job was not over for the Atlanta police.

Fearing vandalism, commanders posted officers to guard the tomb day and night. "I sat there with my binoculars and .30-caliber rifle for quite a few weeks," Bell says.

What he saw was a stream of Atlantans driving by the cemetery at all hours. They looked, paid their respects and left in peace.

In the city of his birth, King's legacy was safe.

 Atlanta Constitution funeral notice from Saturday, April 6, 1968.