In the high-stakes game of chicken between CEOs and states, who blinks first?

(Credit: Illustration by Doug Chayka)

In 1964, when Martin Luther King Jr. had just been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, Coca-Cola took a stand that it’s still remembered for in its hometown of Atlanta.

A dinner was planned to honor the civil rights leader in January 1965, but many in the city’s white business elite were initially reluctant to attend. After the New York Times reported on the sparse RSVPs, Coca-Cola’s then president and CEO, Paul Austin, gathered the city’s business leaders for a private meeting at the exclusive Piedmont Driving Club and flexed the corporation’s considerable heft—with a threat.