[AnAmericanMother]

I don't think it was racism, as that word is correctly defined. Maddox never believed that black people were inferior to white people, or that they should be mistreated or exterminated. However, he was a segregationist, who believed that the races were happier living apart. Obviously that view has been discredited by modern received wisdom, but remember that he was born in 1915 and that was what just about everybody believed then.

If he had truly been a racist, I don't think he would have had as many black friends as he did. That word is thrown around way too freely nowadays, and misuse of the word makes it hard to distinguish between otherwise decent people who happen to disagree on racial policy issues, and the REAL racists. If you've ever met a real one, you'd never call Maddox one. He's too much of a gentleman.

[Chancellor Palpatine]

Apologetics for those old line segregationists may have worked with a denser public, and even make the practice seem quaint to them, but that garbage doesn't work anymore except with the grotesquely ignorant.

[Riverman94610]

Believe me,I have met plenty of REAL racists,including a rather prominent member of the John Birch Society back in the mid-Sixties who used to sit me down in his basement den when I was a teenager and regale me with stories about how"the niggers"were going to rise up in his hometown of Pasadena and slaughter the white folks!
Then there the "white liberal"at University of Georgia who drove me to the airport in Atlanta one evening,drinking a fifth on the way down from Athens.He suddenly turned off the freeway and cruised down one of the black ghetto streets near downtown yelling racial epithets like"darky"and "jungle bunny".
Never trusted the liberals after that little episode.
Back to Maddox-in May,1972,he had a souvenir shop in Underground Atlanta and I was showing some black Zambian foreign students the sights.They had heard of Maddox and wanted to get his autograph!They went in there,Lester obliged them,and they were grinning ear to ear at their marvelous luc.
At the time I thought they were unclear on the concept!But isn't life full of ironies?

[Clemenza]

Maddox always struck me as a (embarassing) walking regional stereotype, much like my Senator, Chuck "The Schmuck" Schumer. I never much cared for his politics and could not really relate to him. Nevertheless, I wish the best for him and his family as he nears the end of his life.

BTW: My father ate at the Pickrick while on a business trip to Atlanta. He said the food was wonderful.