An airline passenger recentlydisembarked from a plane and held his phone on video as he walked through the airport. One of the first people he encountered was Marjorie Taylor Greene. He passed by her without comment or acknowledgment.
In the late sixties my uncle and I were walking through downtown Cincinnati. We came across a number of limos, police, and TV news crews. We discovered that a Cincinnati hotel was hosting a Governor’s Conference, and all fifty governors were in town. Directly up the sidewalk from us was the easily recognizable governor of Georgia, Lester Maddox.
When Maddox died in 2003 the NY Times published this:
“Lester Maddox, the Atlanta restaurant owner and archsegregationist who adopted the pick handle as his symbol of defiance in a successful bid for the Georgia governorship in 1966, died on Wednesday in Atlanta. He was 87.
Mr. Maddox first came to national attention in 1964, after he violated the newly signed federal Civil Rights Act by refusing to serve three black Georgia Tech students at his Pickrick Restaurant. The Pickrick was noted for the quality of its fried chicken and for its reasonable prices, but Mr. Maddox was determined that no black should experience the ambience that he had reserved exclusively for whites.
When the three black men tried to buy some of his chicken in July 1964, Mr. Maddox waved a pistol at them and said: ''You no good dirty devils! You dirty Communists!''
Some of his customers were sympathetic to his cause and interrupted their meal to take pick handles that Mr. Maddox had put by the door (and sold for $2 apiece) to make it clear that the blacks would not be served. The pick handles, which Mr. Maddox also sold in his souvenir shop, were called ''Pickrick drumsticks'' and came to symbolize his resistance to the civil rights movement. On occasion, Mr. Maddox would autograph the handles.”
Maddox was standing on the sidewalk shaking hands with passersby. I crossed the street to avoid him, an act I have regretted all my life. He was trash. He needed someone, even a college student, to confront him with that fact.
I decided then that I would never let that opportunity pass me by again. If I were that airline passenger, if I were to encounter MTG I wouldn’t avoid her. I’d like to think that I’d say something like this: “Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma bomber, was executed shortly after he was convicted of murdering 169 people. There wasn’t enough time for him to recognize the horror of who he was and what he had done. Ms. Greene, I can only hope that you live long enough to learn what damage you do everyday, and what a disgrace you are.” Or something like that. Hey, I’m still working on it.