[...] He had served only one day when he was told that an anonymous 'well-dressed Negro' had paid the $178 fine. King protested; he wanted to stay jailed. The Albany police chief refused, explaining that since King's fine had now been paid, it would be illegal to keep him behind bars. The 'well-dressed Negro' was a fiction invented by segregationist police as an excuse to release King, whose stature grew with each day jailed. The well-dressed-Negro ploy would be one of the few strategies effective against nonviolent protest, getting civil rights leaders off the streets overnight without allowing them the symbolic martyrdom of a well-publicized prison term.