On this day in 1968, Boston crackled with tension. African Americans, enraged by the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis, took to the streets. Community leaders urged calm, police showed restraint, and while there were scores of arrests, no one was seriously hurt. However, riots in more than 100 cities across the country resulted in millions of dollars worth of property damage and 46 deaths. The next day, all of Boston public schools held memorial services. Thousands of people, black and white, gathered on Boston Common to pay tribute to the "minister of peace", the nation's greatest civil rights leader — a man from Georgia who liked to call Boston his second home.