 In 1980 one black councilwoman described the Petersburg city government as "our own little version of the Byrd Machine", comparing it to the political organization led by segregationist Democrat, Harry Flood Byrd, that controlled Virginia politics for decades.Following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968, Petersburg was the first city to designate his birthday as a holiday; it has been memorialized as a national holiday.In an attempt to stem its economic decline, in 1971 the city completed steps begun in 1966 to annex 14 square miles of land from adjacent and predominately white counties of Prince George and Dinwiddie.