American chat show host Jimmy Kimmel has just been taken off air by ABC/Disney after pressure from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) – which is supposed to be an independent media regulator, but has acted in a very partisan manner. However, this is nothing new. Back in 1970, the pro-segregation ex-Governor of Alabama, Lester Maddox, stormed off The Dick Cavett Show because his fanbase were referred to as “bigots”. He tried to intimidate a well known media figure.
It’s an extraordinary incident that you can view below. Maddox even gives Cavett a one minute deadline to take back comments made by the host and an African-American guest, the former football player Jim Brown. It’s a very clear indication that things have not changed when it comes to attempts to censoring the media and extremists demanding they are not called…extremists.
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Maddox the segregationist
Lester Maddox was an apologetic segregationist. Six years before this TV appearance in 1964, he refused to de-segregate his southern cuisine diner that he operated with family members: the Pickrick Restaurant. Refusing to serve African-American customers was in deliberate contravention of the Civil Rights Act passed into law that year. Instead of complying he shut down the business. This newspaper report below from The Palm Beach Post contains language of that time that you may find upsetting.
Maddox the “Dixiecrat”
In the 1960s, the American South was still strongly Democrat. Though there was a gulf between the Democrats of the South, termed the “Dixiecrats”, and the Democrats on the west and east coasts. The reason for the strong position of the Democrats goes back to the Civil War period in the early 1860s. The Confederate south was defeated, and slavery abolished, by the victorious northern states, governed by Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party. That legacy of bitterness towards the word ‘Republican’ took a century to diminish. In the 1970s and 1980s, the Republicans re-positioned their party to attract southern, conservative Dixiecrats and the rest is history.
Maddox was very much the last of that wave of southern Democrats, unapologetically racist and supportive of segregation. In September 1975, The Charlotte Observer newspaper reported that Maddox used to force black motorists out of his parking lot, brandishing a pistol. He handed out axe handles to his followers to use on any black family that tried to enter the Pickrick Restaurant. And would comment to his customers that Martin Luther King would be along any moment to collect their dirty dishes and wash them.
On the Cavett show, he blustered and ranted that his fans should not be referred to as bigots and demanded that Cavett apologise or he would storm off. Cavett was, by our standards today, a very diplomatic and urbane chat show host. Nothing seemed to fluster him. He refused to outright apologise and Maddox left – although he would subsequently return for another appearance.
