Lester Maddox

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Lester Garfield Maddox

Lester Garfield Maddox (September 30, 1915 – June 25, 2003) was an American Democratic Party politician who was governor of the U.S. state of Georgia from 1967 to 1971. He initially came to prominence as a staunch segregationist but, like many, he moderated his positions somewhat when it became clear that the gains of the civil rights movement were not going to be rolled back by political means, peaceful or otherwise.

1 Early life
2 Life and career
3 Retirement
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Early life

Lester Maddox was born in Atlanta, the second of the seven children of Dean Garfield Maddox and Flonnie Castleberry Maddox; his father was a steelworker. Dropping out of school following his junior year in high school, Maddox earned $4 a week at a local drugstore in order to help the family's finances in the midst of the Depression. He went on to become an apprentice dental technician before accepting a job in his father's line of work at the steel mills. Starting out at a salary of $10 per week, Maddox eventually was promoted to foreman.

[edit] Life and career

In 1944, Maddox, along with his wife, the former Virginia Cox, used $400 they had saved to open up a combination grocery store/restaurant. Building on that success, the couple then bought property on Hemphill Avenue off the Georgia Tech campus to open up the "Pickrick" restaurant.

Maddox made the "Pickrick" a family affair with his wife and children working side-by-side with him. The restaurant became known for its simple, inexpensive food, including its specialty, skillet-fried chicken.

The "Pickrick" soon became a thriving business. The restaurant also provided Maddox with his first political forum: the restaurant became well known in Atlanta for large newspaper advertisements that featured cartoon chickens. Following the Brown v. the Board of Education decision of 1954, these restaurant ads began more and more to feature the cartoon chickens commenting on the political questions of the day. However, Maddox's refusal to adjust to changes following the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 manifested itself when he filed a lawsuit to continue his segregationist policies. He first prevented a trio of Negroes from entering his restaurant by holding a gun at the entrance, then later defied a court order by proclaiming to another group of Negroes, "If you live 100 years, you'll never get a piece of fried chicken here."

Unable to win his case, he became a martyr to states-rights advocates by selling the restaurant to employees rather than bowing to government coercion. Many of his fellow citizens praised him for doing this.

During his ownership of the "Pickrick", he twice ran for mayor of Atlanta. In 1957, he lost to incumbent William B. Hartsfield, who sought a more moderate racial approach, then lost to Ivan Allen, Jr. four years later, with the two politicians splitting the white vote. Allen's ability to garner virtually all the black votes proved to be the difference.

In 1962, Maddox ran for Lieutenant Governor against Peter Zack Geer, a candidate who shared his opponent's strong states-rights views. In an effort to differentiate from each other, both candidates attempted to paint the other as an extremist. Geer won the race, but Maddox gained valuable recognition across the state.

When Maddox sought the Democratic Party nomination for Governor of Georgia in 1966, his principal opponent for the nomination was former governor Ellis Arnall. That election was still in the era of Democratic Party dominance in Georgia, when winning the Democratic primary was tantamount to election. Since there was no Republican primary at the time, and there were a great many voters who identified with the Republicans, the Republicans voted in the Democratic primary and chose the candidate who they thought would lose against their candidate, Howard Callaway. In the primary election, Arnall won a plurality of the popular vote, but was denied the required majority. Lester Maddox, the candidate in second place, then ran in a run-off against Ellis Arnall. Again, the Republicans voted in the Democratic primary runoff. There were some two or three other candidates, including then-state Senator Jimmy Carter. Arnall barely campaigned in the run-off election, and the result was a victory for Maddox.

Stunned, Arnall announced a write-in candidacy for the general election, insisting that Georgians must have the option of a moderate Democrat besides party-nominee Maddox and the Republican candidate. In that contest, Republican nominee Howard Callaway, one of the first Republican members of the United States House of Representatives elected from Georgia since Reconstruction, won a plurality and Maddox finished second; under the election rules then in effect, the state legislature was required to select a governor from the two candidates with the highest number of votes. With the legislature overwhelmingly dominated by Democrats, all of whom had been required to sign a Democratic loyalty oath which required them to support Democrats only, Maddox became Governor, serving from 1967 to 1971.

Maddox campaigned hard for states-rights. He then governed as a moderate, and appointed more blacks to state government office than any of his predecessors. Despite this, Maddox did manifest anti-black sentiments while in office. Upon the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., he denied the slain civil rights leader the honor of lying in state in the Georgia state capitol. He reportedly abhorred the idea of flying the state flag at half-staff "in honor of a Negro."

His often self-deprecating humor and off-the-cuff manner stood in contrast to the fiery rhetoric of other Southern politicians such as George Wallace and Strom Thurmond: when asked what could be done to improve the abysmal conditions in Georgia prisons, Maddox replied that what was really needed was a better class of prisoner. Maddox's chief of staff was Zell Miller, who went on to serve two terms as governor in the 1990s.

In 1968, a small Atlanta repertory company produced a play entitled, "Red, White and Maddox". The play ridiculed Maddox and imagined him winning the 1972 U.S. presidential election, then starting a war with the Soviet Union. It was widely panned as an amateur attempt at comedy, and quickly folded.

Under the Georgia constitution of 1945, Maddox was prohibited from running for a second consecutive term, necessitating a 1970 run for Lieutenant Governor of Georgia. Although Maddox was elected as a Democratic candidate at the same time as Jimmy Carter's election as Governor as a Democratic candidate, the two were not running mates; in Georgia, particularly in that era of Democratic dominance, the winners of the primary elections went on to easy victories in the general elections without campaigning together as an official ticket or as runningmates. Carter and Maddox found little common ground during their four years of service, often publicly feuding with each other.

Shortly after that election, Maddox appeared as a guest on The Dick Cavett Show on December 18, 1970. During a commercial break, fellow guest and former football player Jim Brown asked Maddox if he had "any trouble with the white bigots because of all the things you did for blacks." On the air, Cavett substituted the word "admirers" in place of "bigots", enraging Maddox. After demanding an apology, Maddox walked off the show.

Maddox ran again for governor in 1974 but lost in the Democratic primary to George Busbee. Maddox's former chief of staff Zell Miller was successful in his own bid to succeed Maddox as lieutenant governor. When Carter ran for President in 1976, Maddox ran against him as the nominee of the American Independent Party, saying that his former rival was "the most dishonest man I ever met." Maddox only received 170,000 votes in the election, less than 1 percent of the vote.

[edit] Retirement

With his political career over and with massive debts stemming from his 1974 gubernatorial bid, Maddox began a short-lived nightclub comedy career in 1977 with an African-American, Bobby Lee Sears, who had worked as a busboy in his restaurant. Sears had served time in prison for a drug offense before Maddox, as Lieutenant Governor, was able to assist him in obtaining a pardon. Calling themselves "The Governor and the Dishwasher," the duo performed comedy bits built around musical numbers with Maddox on harmonica and Sears on guitar.

On September 25, 1977, Maddox suffered a heart attack, but recovered and attended a number of appreciation dinners from Georgia Democrats that reduced his debts. In an attempt to raise further money, Maddox auctioned off memorabilia the following year from his days as a restaurateur and a politician. Included in this collection were autographed ax handles. The auction brought only $1,392, but Maddox refused to declare bankruptcy saying, "I'd rather die."

Maddox began a real estate company, but never again enjoyed the financial success he had enjoyed with the "Pickrick". When he was diagnosed with cancer in 1983, Maddox traveled to the Bahamas for experimental treatment. Two years later, the facility where he received his treatment was closed due to fears of contamination by AIDS. He never contracted the latter disease and made a successful recovery from his cancer.

He made one final unsuccessful bid for governor in 1990, then underwent heart surgery the following year. He remained a visible figure in his home community of Cobb County for the remainder of his life. In 1992 and 1996, Maddox crossed party lines and endorsed unsuccessful populist Republican Patrick J. Buchanan for the presidency. His last public speech was in Atlanta in 2001 at the annual national conference of the Council of Conservative Citizens, of which he was a member.

In 2003, after a fall while recuperating from intestinal surgery in an Atlanta hospice, he died from pneumonia and prostate cancer.

Lester Maddox and his wife Virginia were married for sixty-one years. At Maddox's home, a prominent landmark was a sign he had made. The first half of the sign read: "Thanks be to God; He has given me my precious Virginia for 61 years as of May 9, '97." A second sign was added below it after his wife died shortly after. This sign read: "and God took her from me and carried her home 45 days later."

The Interstate Highway 75 bridge over the Chattahoochee River at the southeastern boundary of Cobb County, GA is named the Lester and Virginia Maddox Bridge. His name also appears in the opening lines of Randy Newman's song Rednecks, in allusion to his appearance on the Dick Cavett television program.

[edit] References

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