DanMargarita.com

Actually, it was quite the contrary. As a child she helped her progressive parents campaign for civil rights and voting rights for women long before Maddox or Thurmond publicly uttered a sentence about "race mixing."

It's ironic that her death would complete this trio of celebrity deaths since she won an Oscar for her performance in "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner," a film in which she plays a progressive woman whose commitment to civil rights is tested when her daughter brings home her fiance, who turns out to be black. One can only imagine the reaction if Maddox' or Thurmond's daughter did such a thing. It would probably wind up as "guess who's getting lynched."

Now that they are all departed, those who believe in an afterlife may have an opinion on which direction each may be headed, so in keeping with this country's fascination with reality TV game shows let's play "Guess Who's Going to Heaven."

Maddox gained fame in 1964 the day after President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act when armed with a pistol and a pickax handle, he chased away black protesters who had sat down to eat in his restaurant. That's the kind of service that will severely cut down on a tip.

Rather than comply with the law and serve blacks, he closed the restaurant and later sold it. Had he lived a hundred years earlier, I suspect that he would've served blacks, or at least fed the ones that he owned.

The bet here is that Maddox will be taking the express train south.

Strom Thurmond was originally a Democrat but turned against President Truman after Truman had proposed an anti-lynching bill and an end to discrimination on trains and busses. In a time and a region where you might've seen a lynching on trains and busses, Thurmond decided to run against Truman as a States Rights or "Dixiecrat" candidate on a segregationist platform. The platform turned out to be termite infested and Truman won re-election.

Thurmond then made his entrance to the U.S. Senate as the only write-in candidate in history, and set a filibuster record of twenty four hours to protest President Eisenhower's Civil Rights Act that allowed the Justice Department to seek injunctions against local officials who denied citizens the right to vote.

Somehow that's not a speech I can imagine Jimmy Stewart making in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington."

"Wh-wh-wh-what's going on here? Y-y-y-you can't just have a mixing of the races. Wh-wh-whites and coloreds aren't supposed to be together. Can't you see what happening? Potter isn't selling, Potter's buying! W-w-wait, that's the wrong movie parody. I'm supposed to be doing 'Mr. Smith Goes to Washington' and n-n-not 'It's a Wonderful Life.'"

In fairness, Thurmond became the first Southern senator to hire a black person for his staff and voted for the establishment of a Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. Whether it was a genuine change of heart or political expedience, who can say?

That's a pretty bad past, but if he had a genuine change of heart, he may be eligible for "purgatory."

As for Ms. Hepburn, her civil rights record is previously mentioned. The worst failing that I can discern is her legendary romance with Spender Tracy who, although separated from his wife, never divorced her.

While that would be classified as adultery, the fact that Tracy wouldn't divorce his wife at least assumes a sense of morality on his part. If anything, it was a sin born of love. Other than that, the most horrible offense I can come up with is her 1937 film "Quality Street." Apparently it wasn't a very good movie.

I'm guessing that she's headed in the opposite direction of Lester Maddox.

Of course it's not up to us to make these decisions as to who goes to Heaven, but if I were a betting man, my money wouldn't be on two guys who probably wouldn't watch a movie entitled "The African Queen."