Lester Garfield Maddox Sr. (September 30, 1915 – June 25, 2003) was an American politician who served as the 75th governor of Georgia from 1967 to 1971.
A populist Southern Democrat, Maddox came to prominence as a staunch segregationist, when he refused to serve African-American customers in his Atlanta restaurant, the Pickrick, in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He was soon after elected governor in 1966. Ineligible to run for a second consecutive term in 1970, he sought and won election as lieutenant governor instead, serving alongside his successor as governor, Jimmy Carter. Maddox later ran for president in 1976 for the American Independent Party.
Maddox was born in Atlanta, Georgia, the second of nine children born to Dean Garfield Maddox, a steelworker, and his wife, the former Flonnie Castleberry. Maddox left school shortly before graduation to help support the family by taking odd jobs, including real estate and grocery. He received his high school diploma through correspondence courses. During World War II, Maddox worked at the Bell Aircraft factory in Marietta, Georgia, producing the B-29 Superfortress bomber.
In 1944, Maddox, along with his wife Hattie Virginia (née Cox, 1918–1997), used $400 in savings to open a combination grocery store-and-restaurant called Lester's Grill. Building on that success, the couple then bought property on Hemphill Avenue near the Georgia Institute of Technology campus to open up the Pickrick Restaurant.
Maddox made the Pickrick a family affair, with his wife and children also working with him. Known for its simple, inexpensive Southern cuisine, including its specialty, skillet-fried chicken, the Pickrick soon became a thriving business. The restaurant also provided Maddox with his first political forum. He placed advertising which featured cartoon chickens in the Atlanta newspapers. Following the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision of the United States Supreme Court, these restaurant ads began 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. Maddox said that he would close his restaurant rather than serve African Americans. An initial group of black demonstrators came to the restaurant but did not enter when Maddox informed them that he had a large number of black employees. In April 1964, more African Americans attempted to enter the restaurant. Maddox confronted the group with a bare pickaxe handle. Maddox provides the following account of the events:
Mostly customers, with only a few employees, voluntarily removed the twelve Pickrick Drumsticks, (a euphemism for pickaxe handles) from the nail kegs on each side of the large dining room fireplace. They had been forewarned by the arrival of Atlanta's news media of an impending attempted invasion of our restaurant by the racial demonstrators and once the demonstrators and agitators arrived, the customers and employees pulled the drumsticks (pickaxe handles) from the kegs and went outside to defend against the threatened invasion.
The "invasion" Maddox referred to was three black seminary students who had asked to be seated.
Maddox gained the approval of segregationists by leasing and then selling the restaurant to employees rather than agreeing to serve black customers. He claimed that the issue was not hostility to blacks, but constitutional property rights. He even built a monument to "private property rights" near the restaurant.
The Civil Rights Digital Library at the University of Georgia contains the following account of the closing of his restaurant:
Maddox closed the Pickrick on August 13 and reopened the business on September 26 as the Lester Maddox Cafeteria, where he pledged to serve only "acceptable" Georgians. During a trial for contempt of court on September 29, Maddox argued against the charges because he was no longer offering service to out-of-state travelers or integrationists. On February 5, 1965, a federal court ruled that Maddox was in contempt of court for failing to obey the injunction and assigned fines of two hundred dollars a day for failing to serve African Americans. Maddox ultimately closed his restaurant on February 7, 1965, rather than integrate it; he claimed that President Lyndon Johnson and communists put him out of business.
The building was purchased by Georgia Tech in 1965; it was used for many years as the placement center and was later known as the Ajax building. It was demolished in May 2009.
During his ownership of the Pickrick, Maddox, a Democrat, failed in two bids for mayor of Atlanta. In 1957, he lost to incumbent William B. Hartsfield, for whom the Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport is named. Hartsfield had pursued a more moderate approach to racial issues. In 1961, Maddox lost to Ivan Allen, Jr., with whom he split the white vote. Allen's ability to garner virtually all of the black vote provided his margin of victory.
In 1962, Maddox ran for lieutenant governor as a Democrat, against Peter Zack Geer, a candidate with whom he shared segregationist and states' rights views. In an effort to differentiate themselves from each other, each attempted to paint the other as an extremist. Geer won the race, 55–45%, but Maddox gained attention across the state.
In the following years, Maddox proclaimed himself a "Society of Liberty" martyr intent on opposing a central government which thwarted states' rights and gave special protection to minority groups. He was recognized by his rimless eyeglasses, dome-shaped forehead, bald head, and nervous energy. It was said of Maddox, "We have a populist revolution in its truest sense moving here. White people who work with their hands see in Lester Maddox a man of their own kind and are fighting to elect him [as governor]." Time magazine termed Maddox a "strident racist"; Newsweek viewed him as a "backwoods demagogue out in the boondocks". According to one account, the former restaurateur's appeal transcended race to embrace a right-wing brand of "populism", picturing government, rather than big business, as the villain.
When Maddox sought the Democratic nomination for governor in 1966, his principal primary opponent 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. There was no Republican primary at the time, but there were voters who identified with the Republican Party. Republicans cast ballots in the open Democratic primary election, and some chose the candidate they believed would most likely lose the general election to their nominee, Howard "Bo" Callaway. In the primary, Arnall won a plurality of the popular vote, but he was denied the required majority. Maddox, the second-place candidate, entered the runoff election against Arnall. State senator Jimmy Carter finished in a strong third place. Again, some Republicans voted in the Democratic primary runoff. Arnall barely campaigned in the runoff, and Maddox emerged victorious, 443,055 to 373,004.
Maddox quipped that he had been nominated despite having "no money, no politicians, no television, no newspapers, no Martin Luther King, no Lyndon Johnson, and we made it!" He joked further that Johnson had been "the best campaign manager I've got even if he did put me out of business", a reference to the closing of the Pickrick Restaurant to avoid desegregation. On winning the runoff, the Baptist Maddox, who neither smoked nor drank alcohol, described God as his "campaign manager".
Stunned Arnall supporters announced a write-in candidacy for the general election, insisting that Georgians must have the option of a moderate Democrat beside the conservatives Maddox and Callaway. In his general election campaign, Maddox equated the Callaway Republicans to the American Civil War and the 1864 March to the Sea waged in Georgia by Union general William Tecumseh Sherman. He criticized the Callaway family textile mill, which he alleged had kept wages at $10 a week in Troup County. Maddox said that Callaway was unable to relate to farmers, small businessmen, and the unemployed: "He would be a lot better off if he knew about people as well as dollars." Maddox said that Callaway Gardens had hired off-duty police officers to maintain segregation at the tourist park in Pine Mountain, but a superior court judge verified that Callaway had an open admission policy at the facility.