Maddox involved in restaurant ruckus
WASHINGTON (UPI) — Gov.
Lester Maddox of Georgia called a Negro congressman a baboon and an ass Tuesday when the lawmaker threatened to throw him out of the House restaurant for giving away souvenir ax handles.
Maddox and Rep. Charles C. Diggs, D-Mich., one of the House's nine black members, engaged in a shouting match that some feared would result in blows, but a plainclothes police officer stepped in and stopped the argument.
"I was sitting there enjoying my broiled salmon steak when a member identified to me as Congressman Diggs threatened to throw me out," Maddox said afterwards.
"I challenged him to go ahead and do it. I told him he was acting more like an ass and a baboon than a member of Congress," he said.
Diggs, whose account differed
only in detail, objected to Maddox passing out autographed, full-sized ax and pick handles to congressmen and restaurant employees. The handles recall Maddox' days as an Atlanta restaurant owner when he used ax and pick handles to bar Negroes from his Pickrick Chicken House.
Maddox entered the House restaurant after testifying against extension of the 1965 Voting Rights Act at a Senate subcommittee. At the hearing, he tangled with Sen. Birch Bayh, D-Ind.
"This is discriminatory," Maddox said of the present act which applies only to seven Southern states. "It's illegal. It's unconstitutional. It's un-American. It's un-Godly."
"Amen," said Bayh, provoking laughter.
"And phoey on anything that says any different," replied Maddux. Then, in his final words before the subcommittee, he told Sen. Sam J. Ervin, D-N.C., "The
South shall rise again, senator."
Maddox is permitted in the House restaurant because as a governor he is one of the public officials who enjoys "the privilege of the house floor."
Accompanied by a Georgia highway patrolman, he brought with him his customary box of autographed ax and pick handles, which he says he gives away strictly on request.
Shortly after the incident in the restaurant, Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., another of nine black House members, denounced Maddox' conduct on the House floor and said he was preparing a resolution declaring the governor unwelcome in the House restaurant from now on.
Speaker John W. McCormack,
it was learned, personally directed that Maddox' ax and pick handles be cleared from the dining room. He sent Democratic leader Carl Albert to the restaurant to pass on McCormack's instructions to Rep. John C. Kluczyski, D-Ill., chairman of the House Restaurant Committee, who was having lunch at the time.
Environment meeting scheduled April 17-18
The Midwestern Conference on the Environment will meet April 17-18, at the University of Missouri at Kansas City.
The purpose of this colloquium is to inform students from a seven-state region (Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Arkansas) about the problems affecting our environment.
William M. Hannay, coordinator of the program, said the conference will serve as a "kick-off" for the April 22 teach-in for the midwest.
Stewart Udall, Senators Edmund Muskie, D-Maine, and Gaylord Nelson, D-Wis., Jesse Unruh, Dr. Lee DuBridge, William Scott Jr., Vic Yannacone, Paul Ehrlich and Barry Commoner have been sent invitations to be panelists in the scheduled discussion groups.
Topics for the panel groups will be "The Effect of Man on the Environment," "The Effect of the Environment on Man," "Technological Solutions," and "Political Solutions."
Under these topics subjects such as population, pollution,
Feb. 25 1970 KANSAN 11
"urbanitis," crime, health, noise programming, waste management laws and individualism will be discussed.
Fifty-five colleges and universities, state and local government officials, state and national legislators and representatives of private sectors have been invited to attend.
Guatemala selected for field site
The second largest sugar plantation in Guatemala is the site of a field center established by the Organization for Tropical Studies (OTS), of which KU is a member. The 10,000 acres plantation is in El Salto, which has a population of 3,000.
Kluczynski said he told Madad-
ko the handles would have to go,
but the Georgia governor pro-
tested they were only souvenirs.
Don Roberto Dorio, president of the operation, gave OTS housing for 20 to 25 persons plus a classroom for $100 a month rent. The rent is put into a fund by Dorio to help support Guatemalan students in OTS studies. A pilot study research program and two courses already are in progress.
"I said they looked more to me like something that could lay open the side of a man's head," Kluczynski said. "I said maybe you can distribute them in your restaurant but not in mine and I run this one."
At about that time, he said, Diggs appeared and his heated argument with Maddox began.
The group told Maddox passing out pick and ax handles was inappropriate, Diggs said. Maddox said he didn't see why anybody should be offended. Diggs replied that he certainly was, and that he was sure his feeling was
Diggs" account differed only in detail. He said when he heard what Maddox was doing he got restaurant manager Kermit Cowan and Rep. John C. Kluczynski, D-Ill., chairman of the House Restaurant Committee to accompany him to Maddox' table.
shared by other Negro congressmen and blacks generally.
"I told him he was the guest or the House, and obligated to abide by its rules of decorum. He said he had as much right here as I did. I said I was a member and he wasn't and he had no right here at all. Then things started heating up. He got red in the face, threw down the money for his lunch, and got up," said Diggs.
It was about then that "the FBI man"—later identified as a District of Columbia plainclothes officer assigned to the Capitol—moved in, apparently to make sure no blows were exchanged.
Would you feel at home with the Quakers?
There's nothing mysterious or exclusive about the Society of Friends, and you may find that the Quakers can help you with an approach to religion that you can't find elsewhere. What do they offer?
First, Quakers like to call themselves "seekers." They don't all claim to have found God yet (so they don't have a creed or a fixed set of beliefs), but they do claim that by following Christian principles seven days a week, you will experience very clearly what God's love means, and that this is the way to be at peace with yourself, and with your neighbours.
Second, they offer the "seeker" the companionship of the local Quaker Meeting.
Meetings are held in Danforth Chapel on Jayhawk Blvd., Sundays 10:15-12:00. For information contact:
Robert E. Hinshaw, Clerk M. Otle Meeting of the Society of Friends VI 3-9574