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Box 19, Folder 13, Document 16
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Hetroit Free Press
AN INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER
JOHN S. KNIGHT, PRESIDENT AND EDITOR
LEE HILLS, EXECUTIVE EDITOR AND PUBLISHER
JOHN 6. OLSON, GENERAL MANAGER
Published every morning by Knight Newspapers, Inc., 321 Lafayette Blvd., Detroit, Michigan 48231
10-A
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 1966
¢ As We See It
Georgia Deserves Better
Than Its November Fate
This was his Georgia, this his share
Of pine and river and sleepy air,
Of summer thunder and winter rain
That spills bright tears on the window
pane -
With the slight fierce passion of a
young man’s grief,
Of the mocking bird and the mulberry
. leaf.
So Stephen Vincent Benet described it
in his classic “John Brown’s Body.” But
Benet was talking of the Georgia of Clay
Wingate, the Georgia of a hundred years
ago.
Since then Georgia has made great
strides. Despite the red-gallused Gene Tal-
madge and some of his successors, Ed
Rivers and Marv Griffin, Georgia has be-
come the second most enlightened state of
the Old South, only behind North Carolina.
Ellis Arnall was one of the first liberal
Southern politicians when he was elected
governor in 1943. Since then there have
been several, notably the last two, Ernest
Vandiver and Carl Sanders, who cannot
succeed himself. Gradually Georgia has
been moving into the 20th Century.
But now the steps of progress have fallen
silent. The Democratic Party of Georgia
has all but destroyed itself, and the people
of the state in November face a choice no
free people should be called upon to make.
In a runoff for the Democratic guberna-
torial nomination, arch-segregationist Les-
ter Maddox stopped the comeback attempts
of Arnall. Maddox is known in the North
as the man who furnished axe handles to
the white patrons of his Pickrick Restaurant
(“You pick it out, we'll rick it up”) to ward
off would-be Negro patrons, atid when or-
dered to permit Negroes to enter, closed
his doors rather than submit to law and to
human dignity.
Facing him will be freshman Rep. How-
ard “Bo” Callaway, Georgia’s only Repub-
lican congressman and the scion of a pater-
nalistic cotton mill family. Callaway is the
kind of a Southerner who is “good to his
._niggers’—so long as they don’t get “uppity
ideas” about equal rights and things like
that, Callaway is also the young man who
led Georgia down the Goldwater path in
1964.
No matter who wins, the people of the
state will lose. Maddox openly professes to
be a devotee of George Wallace. Callaway
openly professes equal affection for Barry
Goldwater.
Georgia deserves better.
i
rw
AN INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER
JOHN S. KNIGHT, PRESIDENT AND EDITOR
LEE HILLS, EXECUTIVE EDITOR AND PUBLISHER
JOHN 6. OLSON, GENERAL MANAGER
Published every morning by Knight Newspapers, Inc., 321 Lafayette Blvd., Detroit, Michigan 48231
10-A
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 1966
¢ As We See It
Georgia Deserves Better
Than Its November Fate
This was his Georgia, this his share
Of pine and river and sleepy air,
Of summer thunder and winter rain
That spills bright tears on the window
pane -
With the slight fierce passion of a
young man’s grief,
Of the mocking bird and the mulberry
. leaf.
So Stephen Vincent Benet described it
in his classic “John Brown’s Body.” But
Benet was talking of the Georgia of Clay
Wingate, the Georgia of a hundred years
ago.
Since then Georgia has made great
strides. Despite the red-gallused Gene Tal-
madge and some of his successors, Ed
Rivers and Marv Griffin, Georgia has be-
come the second most enlightened state of
the Old South, only behind North Carolina.
Ellis Arnall was one of the first liberal
Southern politicians when he was elected
governor in 1943. Since then there have
been several, notably the last two, Ernest
Vandiver and Carl Sanders, who cannot
succeed himself. Gradually Georgia has
been moving into the 20th Century.
But now the steps of progress have fallen
silent. The Democratic Party of Georgia
has all but destroyed itself, and the people
of the state in November face a choice no
free people should be called upon to make.
In a runoff for the Democratic guberna-
torial nomination, arch-segregationist Les-
ter Maddox stopped the comeback attempts
of Arnall. Maddox is known in the North
as the man who furnished axe handles to
the white patrons of his Pickrick Restaurant
(“You pick it out, we'll rick it up”) to ward
off would-be Negro patrons, atid when or-
dered to permit Negroes to enter, closed
his doors rather than submit to law and to
human dignity.
Facing him will be freshman Rep. How-
ard “Bo” Callaway, Georgia’s only Repub-
lican congressman and the scion of a pater-
nalistic cotton mill family. Callaway is the
kind of a Southerner who is “good to his
._niggers’—so long as they don’t get “uppity
ideas” about equal rights and things like
that, Callaway is also the young man who
led Georgia down the Goldwater path in
1964.
No matter who wins, the people of the
state will lose. Maddox openly professes to
be a devotee of George Wallace. Callaway
openly professes equal affection for Barry
Goldwater.
Georgia deserves better.
i
rw
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