Dressed in a three-piece pinstriped suit and sitting in front of City Hall, Mayor George Flaggs Jr. appeared calm and composed while being doused with a bucket of cold water.

Vicksburg’s leading official made good on a dare Thursday, when he accepted the Ice Bucket Challenge from a local disc jockey with K-Hits.

“Chris Burks challenged me,” said Flaggs, referring to the challenge that has gone viral on social media and is sweeping across the country and abroad to raise money for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and other charities.

The Ice Bucket Challenge, has included celebrities and a former president, was inspired by 29-year-old Pete Frates, a former Boston College baseball star who has been living with ALS since 2012.

The challenge involves people getting doused with buckets of ice water on video, posting to social media, then nominating others to do the same — all in an effort to raise awareness about ALS.

From July 29 to Aug. 14, just two weeks after the Ice Bucket Challenge began, $7.6 million was donated to the ALS Association’s various chapters, compared with $1.4 million during the same period in 2013. As of Thursday’s dousing of Flaggs, donations for ALS exceeded $31 million.

In Vicksburg, the Ice Bucket Challenge has been expanded to include local foundations, and Flaggs along with Burks pledged their donations to Jacob’s Ladder. Facebook posts from other Vicksburg residents have also included the Afton Strong Foundation — a charity raising money for a local teenager.

“I don’t take challenges lightly, and I am looking forward to other challenges,” said Flaggs before his dousing.

He also threw out the Ice Bucket Challenge to Vicksburg Warren County School Superintendent Chad Shealy, Circuit Clerk Greg Peltz, Board of Supervisors President Bill Lauderdale, Community Court Judge Mack Varner, Chancery Clerk Donna Hardy, Warren County Tax Collector Antonia Flaggs-Jones, Attorney General Jim Hood, State Senator Briggs Hopson III, Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney and Gov. Phil Bryant.

Gov. Bryant has accepted the challenge and will participate in the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge at 3 p.m. today on the front steps of the Governor’s Mansion. A representative of the Louisiana-Mississippi chapter of the ALS Association will be on hand to field media questions about the association’s work.

ALS, also referred to as “Lou Gehrig’s Disease,” is a progressive disease that affects motor neurons in the brain and the spinal cord. As these motor neurons degenerate, they are no longer able to send impulses to muscle fibers.

Patients experience muscle weakness especially involving the arms and legs, speech, swallowing or breathing.

Once the neurons die, the brain no longer has the ability to control muscle movement, and patients become totally paralyzed.