Posted on 06/24/2003 3:11:14 PM PDT by conservativefromGa
Family Friend says Maddox Gravely Ill
ATLANTA (AP) Former Gov. Lester Maddox, 87, one of the Old South's last segregation governors, was gravely ill at an Atlanta hospice Tuesday, said a family friend who wished to be unnamed.
Maddox has suffered numerous illnesses since leaving the public spotlight, including cancer, a stroke, kidney stones, two heart attacks and an intestinal blockage.
The Marietta Daily Journal reported in Tuesday's edition that Maddox suffered two cracked ribs at an assisted living home about 10 days ago, where he was recovering from intestinal surgery, and later developed pneumonia.
Maddox, a high school dropout born in a working-class section of Atlanta, gained national notoriety for chasing away several blacks from his Pickrick fried chicken restaurant in Atlanta in July 1964, the day after the Civil Rights Act was signed into law.
Though he had never held public office, Maddox won the Democratic nomination for governor in 1966. In the November general election, Maddox was out-polled by a Republican, but a write-in campaign assured that neither candidate had a majority. Election law at the time threw the election to the Democratic Legislature, which elected Maddox.
Despite fears of racial strife, Maddox steered a moderate course for four years. Barred from seeking a second term, he ran for and won the state's No. 2 post, lieutenant governor.
A comeback bid failed in 1974 and Maddox ran his final race in 1990, finishing last in a five-person race for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, drawing just 3 percent of the vote.
Which reminds me of another pair of people that need to be distinguished - Billy McKinney and Hosea Williams. McKinney is a mean racist - lots of folks were afraid of him when he was in power, but nobody ever liked him much (he may be the only Georgia legislator ever to pull out a knife and threaten to cut another representative in the well of the House!) The Rev. Hosea, on the other hand, was a good man at heart and everybody always liked him no matter how outrageous he was. His verbal fireworks are the mirror image of Maddox's - he loved to rabble rouse and raise hell, but when it came right down to it he always had a helping hand for everybody, white or black. He fed the hungry at his Thanksgiving dinner for years, he would literally give his last dollar to a panhandler. Sadly, he had a drinking problem that sometimes got the better of him, but I would always have a welcome and a kind word for the Reverend. I wouldn't cross the street to see McKinney or give him the time of day.
It's just so easy to write off everybody who was raised in the South in the early part of the 20th century as "evil racists" unless they come clean at a show trial after "re-education" and renounce their lives. It's especially easy if you don't know them, and can just condemn them out of hand as cardboard caricatures, easy targets of cheap hate. It's harder to make distinctions, but it is just.
There was much good in Maddox, despite his wrong-headed views, and people who actually met him and talked with him - white and black - realized that his views were entirely theoretical and when it came to practical reality he had a helping hand for everybody. None of the racial horrors predicted by Atlanta liberals happened during his administration - in fact he appointed the first black to statewide office, and appointed more blacks than any of the supposedly liberal governors before him had ever managed to do.
I asked my Mother what it was and she told me it was marshall law in Phenix City. She then had to explain what marshall law was.
I saw the movie years ago and understand it was basically accurate. I used to know several federal agents who worked the Russell-Lee county area during the time. They told me it was about as bad as it gets.
One old agent who had retired told me that the same gang who killed Buford Pusser's wife was the one run out of Phenix City.
I had some small dealings with John Patterson. He impressed me as a personable and able attorney.
There is an old saying:
In the North, they love the race and hate the individual.
In the South they hate the race and love the individual.
My father (born in 1919) was a lot like Lester.
Back in the late Sixties, when I was the long-haired liberal Meathead to his Archie Bunker, I would ask him, "What about Charlie Williams?"....and he'd say, "Well he's different". "What about Larry Hyde, and Marcus Wilson, and Leslie Stokes?"....."Well they're different too."
Heck.... ALL the black folks he knew were different. :-)
And its a fact....it was the Stokley Carmichaels and H. Rap Browns and the Huey Newtons that he was really talking about.
You see it today here on FR.
"I'm not a racist...I love Thomas Sowell and Condi Rice....it's Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson I can't stand.
Does that make me a racist?"
To the liberal media.....it does!
(Just ask Lester)
He was my state representative, believe it or not, thanks to "King Roy" splitting our old district because it didn't go for him when he was elected. But we got organized and voted the *&^%&^%$%$ out!
He's got the unenviable job of holding together a district that includes the slums (no other word for 'em) out the Bankhead Highway and the tonier districts of Southeast Cobb. But he knows who got him elected, and we're making good progress on adjusting his thinking to reality . . . :-D
He was the guy who introduced the legislation last session requiring all restaurants to serve sweet tea. We've been giving him a pretty thorough ribbing over that. On a more serious note, he is working AGAINST the GRTA mass transit boondoggle and that's what we need him to do right now.
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