Monday, June 9, 2008
Food & Life Nostalgia neuralgia: fried chicken, racism and politics
Posted by Cliff Bostock @cliffbostock on Mon, Jun 9, 2008 at 4:26 PM
Talk about an unpleasant blast from the past.
Below is a link to a 1965 WSB-TV news clip about Lester Maddox and his infamous Pickrick Restaurant on 10th Street near Georgia Tech. Maddox became famous for his refusal to serve African-Americans and brandishing ax handles at "outside agitators" who dared to attempt entry to his redneck eatery.
Every Saturday morning during those years, "Ole Lester" published an ad in the Atlanta Journal Constitution that was part segregationist rant and part fried-chicken marketing.
Hate paid off then, as it does now, and Maddox was elected Georgia Governor, 1967-1971. A baffling man who turned out to appoint more blacks to high-level state positions than any of his predecessors, he ended up at one point doing a comedy routine with a former African-American dishwasher from the Pickrick.
See the film piece here. It's hard to believe how far we've come in 40 years. People under 30 might find this stranger than fiction.
(Image of CL cover from southerncurrents.com.)
Comments (3)
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Here's a good joke made up by a friend of mine: Q: "What's brown and sticky?" A: "A stick!" Q: "What's white and sticky?" A: "Lester Maddox!"
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Weird how two of the South's three famous segregationist governors ran on platforms of racial divison and then immediately set about making life better for blacks by appointing them to high level jobs, funding schools, etc Wallace even managed to win a landslide (18 points), much of it through an overwhelming black vote in his favor. Why? hint - Wallace was endorsed in his first run for governor (lost) by the NAACP.
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