Georgia: Different Bird

Though Lester Maddox refused to serve Negroes his fried chicken, he makes no bones about soliciting their patronage at the polls. A noisy racist who shuttered his Atlanta Pickrick Restaurant in 1964 rather than accept an integrated clientele, Maddox won the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in an upset runoff victory over former Governor Ellis Arnall, a racial moderate. Republicans thought that Maddox would be the less formidable candidate against their man, Congressman Howard (“Bo”) Callaway, 39.

Maddox, 51, has proved a wilier bird than even his most knowing opponents anticipated. He has promised to appoint Negroes to state boards and —while insisting that “these colored people won’t be involved in our social life”—says that as Governor he would “treat all minority groups fairly.” Textile Millionaire Callaway is a segregationist himself, though of a subtler hue. He claims that a Maddox victory would be a blow to the state “from which it may never recover,” pleaded before a Rotary Club meeting in the tobacco town of Douglas last month: “Which one is going to bring in industry? Who do you want going up to Washington representing you?” Whom Georgia’s voters want seemed as hard to predict as a wishbone-pull.