Ah, tyranical ONE-PARTY segregationist Democrat rule. Those were the good ol days.
Posted on 06/25/2003 4:33:33 AM PDT by kattracks
ATLANTA, Jun 25, 2003 (AP Online via COMTEX) -- Lester Maddox, the restaurateur who became a symbol of segregationist defiance and then Georgia governor in a fluke election, died Wednesday in an Atlanta hospice, family members said. He was 87.
Maddox, who had battled cancer since 1983, had cracked two ribs when he fell about 10 days ago at an assisted living home where he was recovering from intestinal surgery, his daughter Virginia Carnes said Tuesday.
Maddox became famous in the 1960s when he closed and then sold his Pickrick fried chicken restaurant in Atlanta rather than serve blacks. But fears of racial strife during his 1967-71 governorship proved unfounded when Maddox pursued a policy of relative moderation on race.
It began with an inaugural vow that "there will be no place in Georgia during the next four years for those who advocate extremism or violence."
Barred from succeeding himself at the end of his four-year term, Maddox won the state's second-highest office, and from the position as lieutenant governor battled the man who succeeded him as governor, President-to-be Jimmy Carter.
A bid to return to the executive mansion failed in 1974, and Maddox dabbled at real estate.
He tried a final comeback in 1990, but his years away from the public spotlight and a changing electorate left him fifth in a five-person race with just 3 percent of the vote.
An irrepressible, flamboyant man, Maddox often seemed more caricature than flesh. His slick pate and thick glasses were fodder for cartoonists. He was known for quaint sayings and outrageous gestures like riding a bicycle backward.
"How you, chief?" was one customary greeting. Another: "It's great to be alive. A lot of folks aren't, you know."
He won the hearts of many by opening the doors of his office and the governor's mansion to what he called the "little people." Twice a month he held a kind of people's court to hear the problems of the rank-and-file and offer advice and help.
At his final open house at the executive mansion, thousands turned out to bid Maddox farewell.
Maddox was born Sept. 30, 1915, in Atlanta. He was a school dropout who later took a correspondence course and opened a restaurant. It was through that restaurant, the Pickrick, that Maddox became nationally known for his outspoken opposition to integration.
In one incident, customers armed themselves with pick handles to bar blacks. Pick handles became his trademark, and later he sold them as souvenirs.
Maddox claimed he had nothing against blacks, just forced integration. In the end, he sold the restaurant rather than comply with the public accommodations section of the Civil Rights Act.
"As well as a constitutional human right to associate with whomever you please, there should be a corresponding right to disassociate if you please," he once said.
Maddox ran twice for mayor of Atlanta and once for lieutenant governor before capturing the state's highest office through a quirk in state law.
He won the Democratic nomination for governor in 1966 but trailed Republican Howard H. "Bo" Callaway in the general election. Write-in votes for other candidates prevented Callaway from receiving a majority, and the question was thrown to the Democrat-dominated Legislature, which picked Maddox.
As governor, Maddox interested himself in prison reform and teacher pay, and appointed black musician Graham Jackson to the state Board of Corrections - a high post for a black man at the time.
As his term drew to a close, Maddox challenged a constitutional provision barring governors from succeeding themselves. He failed, but managed to be elected lieutenant governor.
It was a classic mismatch: the liberal, polished Carter as governor and conservative, rough-hewn Maddox in the No. 2 spot. Said Maddox: "It's all right for a fellow to grow peanuts ... but people ought not to think like them. I don't know whether the man is sick, or just a plain fool."
In 1974, Maddox once again was eligible to run for governor. He lost.
The ex-governor flirted with national politics in 1976 when his old nemesis Carter ran successfully for president. As the presidential nominee of the American Independent Party, Maddox got only a handful of votes.
Later, he embarked on a short-lived nightclub comedy career with a black man he pardoned from jail while he was governor. They billed themselves as "The Governor and the Dishwasher."
Maddox's wife, the former Virginia Cox, died in 1997. They had been married for more than 60 years and had two daughters and two sons.
After she died, Maddox resolved to work to keep other marriages together, reasoning that if a few thousand dollars' worth of advertising could save one family, "then it's worth it."
"DEAR MOMS & DADS. Help Save Lives, Families and U.S.A. STAY MARRIED," said an ad that ran in March 1998 in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The spin happened in the Sixties with the AJC and NBCCBSABC and the NY Times and all the other liberal media.
You are just perpetuating it.
We talk real funny down here
We drink too much and we laugh too loud
We're too dumb to make it in no Northern town
And we're keepin' the niggers down
We got no-necked oilmen from Texas
And good ol' boys from Tennessee
And colleges men from LSU
Went in dumb - come out dumb too
Hustlin' 'round Atlanta in their alligator shoes
Gettin' drunk every weekend at the barbecues
And they're keepin' the niggers down
We're rednecks, rednecks
And we don't know our ass from a hole in the ground
We're rednecks, we're rednecks
And we're keeping the niggers down
Now your northern nigger's a Negro
You see he's got his dignity
Down here we're too ignorant to realize
That the North has set the nigger free
Yes he's free to be put in a cage
In Harlem in New York City
And he's free to be put in a cage in the South-Side of Chicago
And the West-Side
And he's free to be put in a cage in Hough in Cleveland
And he's free to be put in a cage in East St. Louis
And he's free to be put in a cage in Fillmore in San Francisco
And he's free to be put in a cage in Roxbury in Boston
They're gatherin' 'em up from miles around
Keepin' the niggers down
Randy Newman
This is an important distinction.
Where does the jursidiction of the federal Civil Rights Act within the boundaries of state, emanate?
Some might say, Art I, Sec 8, Cl 3, the "commerce clause."
Let's assume that that is true.
A federal law, even though it may have legislative jurisdiction within the boundaries of state, still cannot violate the Bill of Rights.
The Civil Rights Act, when applied to Lester Maddox's position on whom he wished to serve and whom he wished not servie violated his constitutional rights under:
Amendment V: "...nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation."
Amendment IX: "The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights, SHALL NOT BE CONSTRUED TO DENY OR DISPARAGE OTHER RETAINED BY THE PEOPLE."
Lester Maddox was on the right constitutional track, without specifically referencing the 9th amendment, when he stated,
"As well as a constitutional human right to associate with whomever you please, there should be a corresponding right to disassociate if you please,"
His campaign signs were rather ominous. Stark white with black lettering: "This is Maddox Country"
This was a very serious time of transition in the South. Lester may have been the best one to get the job done in Georgia. He didn't lay down for the Feds, but I don't recall him oppressing blacks either as Governor.
However, I'll always remember how he entertained the people at social and political gatherings. He was a one trick pony, but what a trick.
He rode a bicycle backwards.
Whether or not, he's in heaven or hell, I'm sure he's riding the bicycle backwards.
RIP Lester.
Today he would be called a libertarian.
You can't spin it away.
You give fodder for idiots like Randy Newman.
Ah, tyranical ONE-PARTY segregationist Democrat rule. Those were the good ol days.
Most Georgians agree with you because Bo Callaway was an unapologetic, stauch conservative who BEAT Maddox in '66 after nearly a century of 'RAT rule. In fact, the only reason Maddox made it through the Dem primary is because Republicans "crossed-over" to find a Robert Byrd-type bigot that would be a joke candidate. Unfortunately the marxist Georgia 'RAT machine doesn't like the idea of individuals having ANY say in their government, so they overturned the election results and installed Czar Maddox.
Evidentially some RINOs on this forum miss the ol' days of socialist ONE-PARTY rat rule. I'm betting these are the same "Republicans" on FreeRepublic who supported the reign of King Roy Barnes. (and I bet Clinton's boy Orville Fabus is on their list of heros too) Gee, what a coincidence.
If was Saxby Chambliss or any other GA Rep, I'd be getting pretty nervious right now. And if was a lifelong GA Republican I'd be pretty disgusted. Decades of nonstop 'RAT rule show many of the "Republicans" in GA are closet Democrats who ONLY "joined" the GOP because they saw the writing on the wall. They miss their 'RAT dictators. It's probably like the Maine "Republicans", a bipartisan combine interested only in maintaining power.
Correction: Former Democrat Georgia Gov. Lester Maddox, Dies...
I don't know why you guys insist that there is a liberal media who lies and distorts except when it comes to Lester Maddox.
Why y'all think they are all of a sudden telling the truth in this case....when every Georgian freeper is telling you otherwise.... is beyond me.
Let me clue you in....the liberal media lied about Lester too....
Imagine that.
I'm not going to re-state everything I said over there. But I knew Maddox personally, spent various times chatting with him over the years. I never supported him politically, but I liked him as a person. My parents voted for Ellis Arnall, that'll tell you where they were coming from (classic urban liberals of the old school, before the Dems got so crazy). I think they held their noses and voted for Callaway in the general (he was not well thought of in GA at that time.) I wasn't old enough to vote in the '66 election, but I followed it with interest because both my parents were very active politically.
Maddox was wrong-headed on segregation, but remember he was born in 1915 and I think his major fault was that he was pig-headed stubborn. More importantly, he never allowed his abstract theory, that the races were happier apart, to interfere with his practical application of helping anybody who needed a hand, black or white. For example, when he was a foreman at Atlantic Steel, the shift supervisor tried to get him to fire two of his workers. They were black. Maddox went to bat for them because he felt they were being treated unfairly, and when the supervisor ordered him to fire them, he quit. He lost his job (in the middle of the Depression) rather than fire two men who didn't deserve it.
If you scout around that other thread, you'll find Maddox's own personal account of the Pickrick incident (and it was picks, and they were part of the decor) which sheds quite a different light on the situation. In brief, a group of agitators egged some folks on to come to the restaurant and threaten Maddox and his wife. They returned a second time after threatening them and started climbing out of their car. He told them to leave his property, and when they refused he showed a pistol he was carrying. Some of his employees grabbed some pick handles from a display by the fireplace. The carfull of people left. Nobody was hurt. A jury acquitted Maddox of brandishing a pistol or whatever the pertinent charge was.
I think you make a telling point that everybody on FR screams about the "lying liberal media" until it comes to Lester Maddox -- then all of a sudden they're all telling the gospel truth. Makes no sense to me. As I said over on that other thread, it's easier to just hate and abuse a cardboard cutout, rather than acknowledge the bundle of contradictions that was Lester Maddox.
As usual, Maddox the populist in action here. When they told him what his official portrait would cost, he pitched a lead pipe fit, and told them just to put up a photo.
Those oil portraits ARE expensive. One guy seemed to have the corner on them for a long, long time, but now the governors and judges and folks like that are shopping around. The price is up in the 20 grand region now, it was probably closer to 10 when Maddox left office.
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