Today's democrats are too liberal--they should be like my old buddy Lester...
We have become too liberal nowadays. Real Democrats should be like Lester Maddox, the guy who I was chief of staff for.....
http://www.savannahnow.com/stories/062603/LOCMaddoxAP.shtml
Symbol of Old South segregation dies
Maddox's legacy is remembered by fist shaking, political resistance and flamboyance
By Dick Pettys
The Associated Press
ATLANTA -- Lester Maddox, one of the South's last fist-shaking segregationist governors who rode into office in 1966 on the notoriety of chasing blacks from his restaurant, died Wednesday. He was 87.
While Alabama's George Wallace and other prominent segregationists of the era eventually said they were wrong and sought to make amends, Maddox went to his death without ever backing down.
"I think forced segregation was wrong. I think it was just as wrong to force integration." And if he had it to do all over, "I'd fight even harder," he told The Associated Press in 1996.
A high school dropout born in a working-class section of Atlanta, Maddox's flair for political showmanship and his anti-integration stance won him a local following in Atlanta, where he made two unsuccessful bids for mayor.
But his fame grew to national proportions in 1964 when a widely disseminated newspaper photograph showed him picking up a pistol and chasing black protesters from his Pickrick fried chicken restaurant the day after the Civil Rights Act was signed into law.
Whites from his restaurant chased the protesters with pick handles, which became Maddox's symbol. He closed and then sold the Pickrick rather than serve blacks.
Though written off by moderates and liberals as a colorful crackpot, Maddox leaped into the 1966 race for governor and captured the Democratic nomination.
But in 1968, Maddox refused to close the Capitol for the funeral of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., which drew thousands of mourners to Atlanta's streets, and he expressed anger that state flags were being flown at half-staff.
"The Maddox administration was a good one, marked by historic and progressive achievements," said U.S. Sen. Zell Miller, Maddox's former chief of staff. "History will judge his administration well."