Lester Maddox

Lester Garfield Maddox (born September 30, 1915 in Atlanta , † June 25, 2003 ibid) was an American politician , governor of the US state of Georgia from 1967 to 1971 and racial segregation representative .

Youth and political advancement

Lester Garfield Maddox was born to Dean Garfield Maddox and Flonnie Maddox, née Castleberr, into a poor family of steel workers. In 1933 he left high school without a degree and worked as a simple worker in a steel mill. In 1936 he married Virginia Cox, with whom he remained married until her death in 1997. During the Second World War he worked in various armaments factories. In his opinion, these businesses were inefficient and a waste of taxpayers' money. So he gave up these positions in 1944 and decided to do business himself. In Atlanta he opened a place he called the Pickrick Cafeteria , which specialized in local popular cuisine. The place was very successful and Maddox was slowly becoming more widely known, especially since he started placing ads in a daily newspaper promoting not only his place but also his politically reactionary views. He was an advocate of racial segregation and consequently no African American people were allowed in his bar .

In 1957 and 1961, he twice ran unsuccessfully for the office of mayor of Atlanta. His candidacy for lieutenant governor in 1962 was also unsuccessful. Despite the new federal civil rights laws, Maddox remained true to the ideas of racial segregation. He announced to the world that he would close his place sooner than open it to blacks. As a result, there were demonstrations by angry civil rights activists in front of his restaurant. Opinions parted about him. The reactionary conservative forces rallied behind Maddox and nominated him, it was a shock to all liberal forces throughout the United States, when it succeeded Maddox, in the primaries for the gubernatorial election of 1966. Democrats liberal ex-Governor Ellis Arnall 54 To beat 29% to 45.71% out of the running. The actual choice then became very tight. Since there was no clear majority between Maddox and his Republican challenger Howard H. Callaway , the Georgian parliament had to elect the governor, and it chose Maddox. Callaway, by the way, was the first Republican candidate since the Reconstruction in the 1870s who had a realistic chance of being elected governor in Georgia; otherwise the Democrats had won all gubernatorial elections by a large majority.

Maddox as Governor of Georgia

Justified fears that under Maddox Georgia would revert to old racial patterns surprisingly turned out to be unfounded. He initiated prison reform, which was also approved by the black population, and increased the budget for the country's universities. Maddox employed more African American people in his administration than any previous governor combined, which was surprising given his previous stance. Even so, he remained a racist in spirit. This was also evident on the occasion of the funeral services for the murdered Martin Luther King in 1968, when he refused to set the flags at half mast. At the same time, he responded with an excessive police presence to rumors that riots could occur during the funeral service. At the 1968 Federal Democratic Convention in Chicago, Maddox opposed his party's civil rights program. Even so, he was a popular governor in Georgia who, paradoxically, found some resonance with African-Americans.

The later years

Maddox could not run again in 1970 due to a clause in the constitution that prohibited direct re-election of a governor. Instead, he applied for the office of lieutenant governor, to which he was then also elected. He often had differences of opinion with the new governor, his political rival Jimmy Carter . In the 1974 gubernatorial election, Carter was the last time an incumbent governor was excluded from direct re-election before a corresponding constitutional amendment. Maddox therefore tried to return to the highest office in the state. In the first round of the primary election , he also won a relative majority of votes. However, since he missed the required absolute majority of votes, there was a runoff election with the second strongest candidate George Busbee . Maddox lost this with 41% against 59% of the vote against Busbee, who then also won the actual election. In January 1975, Maddox left the government. His previous chief of staff, Zell Miller, was elected the new lieutenant governor, and Maddox had also supported his candidacy.

As a candidate of the right-wing American Independent Party , he ran unsuccessfully for the presidency against Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford in 1976 . Then he retired into private life and tried to gain a foothold in various industries. But he did not achieve the great economic breakthrough. In 1990 Maddox made another attempt to return to the governorship, but was far behind in the Democratic primary with only around three percent of the vote. Zell Miller became the candidate and later governor. When Maddox took stock towards the end of his life, he defended most of his decisions and political views and saw no reason to apologize for his racial policies. Finally, on June 25, 2003, he succumbed to cancer.

A bridge in Cobb County , Georgia, over which Interstate Highway 75 runs over the Chattahoochee River , is named after the couple "Lester and Virginia Maddox Bridge".

literature

• Bruce Galphin: The Riddle of Lester Maddox. Camelot, Atlanta 1968
• Justin Nystrom: Segregation's Last Stand: Lester Maddox and the Transformation of Atlanta. In: Atlanta History. 45 (summer 2001)
• Brad Rice: Lester Maddox and the Politics of Populism. In: Harold P. Henderson and Gary L. Roberts (Eds.): Georgia Governors in an Age of Change: From Ellis Arnall to George Busbee. University of Georgia Press, Athens 1988
• Bob Short: Everything Is Pickrick: The Life of Lester Maddox. Mercer University Press, Macon (Georgia) 1999

Web links

• The New Georgia Encyclopedia (English)
• Lester Maddox in the National Governors Association (English)
• Lester Maddox in the database of Find a Grave (English)