In 1969, Sam Massell was elected the first Jewish mayor of Atlanta, Georgia. Politically, Massell changed Atlanta's City elections to nonpartisan, created Atlanta's Urban Design Commission, allowed Muhammad Ali to fight when fifty other cities would not, established Metro Atlanta's mass transit system (MARTA), appointed the first woman to the City Council, named the first blacks to City department head status, and developed the Omni, Atlanta's first enclosed arena. Most importantly, his legacy will be his peaceful guidance of Atlanta (then population 500,000) through its transformation from an all-white power structure to a black city government.