FOR AXHANDLE MADDOX, EVERYTHING WAS BLACK AND WHITE
The Free Press July 10, 2003
Lester Maddox died last week. He was 87, and long ago became living proof of the old axiom that only the good die young. His legacy was that of a proud full-blooded segregationist and bigot. In most states today that will get you arrested. In 1966 Georgia, it got him elected governor.
Our younger generations probably never heard of Lester Maddox. They may know that Garry Maddox played for the Phillies, and Holly Maddox was murdered and stuffed into a trunk by Ira Einhorn. Maybe some of us old folks have even forgotten. So here’s one last hurrah for the man who gave the Old South one last hurrah.
Lester Maddox was an unknown high-school dropout who ran a fried chicken joint in Atlanta in 1964, when the United States government was pursuing it’s first big-time civil rights agenda since Abe Lincoln. Presidents Kennedy and Johnson had decided that a full century was quite enough time for all states to accept integration. Lester may never have read the Emancipation Proclamation, since it wasn’t exactly on the best seller list in Georgia. But he did understand that 100 years before, some Yankees declared that people of all colors were to have equal rights. Lester didn’t quite get in the spirit of the occasion.
He ran newspaper ads condemning integration and the federal government. He also taped a nice hand-lettered sign to his door which said “No Integrationists Served - Red, Yellow, Black or White”. He was a bigot, but he was an equal-opportunity bigot. The U.S. Justice Department took the ads and sign personally. In a highly-publicized demonstration of the new federal mandate to integrate all public establishments, a black man (then referred to as a Negro) was sent into the restaurant.
Thirty seconds later he was back out, followed by Lester, who was brandishing his soon-to-be-famous trademark, an ax handle. The man didn’t get any food, but Lester was in the soup. He announced to the waiting media that he could do as he pleased with his “puh-sonal prop-uh-tee”. It was assumed that he was referring to his restaurant, not the Negro, but you never knew with Lester. No matter which he meant, The Feds disagreed, and were going to make Axhandle the first headline defendant of the new Civil Rights Act. So Lester did what any right-wing zealot would do in this situation - he closed the restaurant and ran for mayor of Atlanta.
His fellow redneck voters just said no, but come 1966, long before the Hanging Chads of Florida, the Great State of Georgia demonstrated it’s own brand of election stealing. You can’t just become governor down there by winning an election. No, suh. You have to receive a certain number of votes, and, in November, no candidate did. So, by law, the governor was to be chosen by the state legislature. The Democratic-controlled state legislature. Did I mention that Lester was the Democratic candidate?
In Georgia politics, no one was referring to him as a bigot. The term was more like “patriot”. But Lester’s appointment was not really intended to prolong segregation. That evil institution was crumbling, and humanitarian Jimmy Carter would be elected governor in 1970. By 1973, Atlanta would have the first black mayor of a major southern city, Maynard Jackson (who also died last week). The reason Georgia chose Lester was the same reason the South chose to fight a hopeless Civil War - to make an undeniable statement about States’ Rights. The right to govern their own state without Federal intervention.
As the Good Ol’ Crackers saw it, the devils in Washington may have been able to impose laws, popular or otherwise, on all states, but they couldn’t interfere with a state election. And installing a man with plantation values in the governor’s mansion was the perfect opportunity to finally, after 100 years, slap the Yankees in the face. Johnny came marching home, one last time. On a rainy night in Georgia, the South rose again, and said to Abraham, Martin, and John “Y’all may be able to stop Lester from running his restaurant, but you can’t stop him from running our state”.
The back-room boys must have been smiling when Lester refused to shut down the capitol building in tribute after Martin Luther King was murdered. But even Axhandle Maddox eventually got religion. Chalices full of it. In fact, he became known as “Lester the Puritan” when he campaigned against drinking and gambling. And, in a shocking turnabout, he vowed that there would be no place in Georgia for those who advocated extremism or violence, and he appointed blacks to important state offices. But, to the end, he never acknowledged that segregation was wrong.
Perhaps his finest hour occurred when a group of black men escaped from one of his prisons. Instead of running, they showed up at the governor’s mansion to publicize the horrible conditions in the state’s correctional facilities. And Lester, the man who had become famous for fighting against the rights of minorities, ordered a full investigation, and later appointed blacks to the Board of Corrections.
Yes, Lester had changed, but the South was changing even faster. He served as Jimmy Carter’s lieutenant governor, but frequently clashed with his boss, and lost the 1974 election. After eight years in office, Lester was out of a job, heavily in debt from his campaigns. And, in a final blow to the memory of segregation, Lester’s own Democratic State Senate refused in 2001 to change Georgia’s law that a civil servant must work for 10 years before receiving a pension.
The day before Lester died, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down one of the most important civil rights decisions since integration, upholding affirmative action quotas in college admissions. It is ironic that the man whose name will forever be synonymous with segregation lived just long enough to hear it.