A Brief History: Jimmy Carter

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Jimmy Carter was a peanut farmer, an engineer and a nuclear physicist–he also served as the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981. Though his presidency was considered below-average or even a failure by scholars following his departure from office, it is his post-presidency humanitarian and peacekeeping efforts that have garnered praise. Carter died on December 29th, 2024 and was the longest-living U.S. president at one hundred years old.

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Early Life

Carter was born at the Wise Sanitarium in Plains, Georgia on October 1, 1924. He had three younger siblings; Gloria, Ruth and Billy. His father, James Earl Carter Sr. was a successful businessman and WWI veteran who owned a general store and invested in farmland. His mother Bessie Lillian Carter, was a nurse. Since 1635, generations of the Carter family worked as cotton farmers following the arrival of English immigrant Thomas Carter, who settled in the Colony of Virginia.

Carter’s family moved often during his childhood, eventually settling down in Archery, Georgia–a town populated mostly by poor black farmhands. Though his father held pro-segregationist views, Carter was allowed to befriend the children of the farmhands. Carter gained early business experience as a teen when his father gave him an acre of farmland that Carter would use to grow and sell peanuts. As Carter grew older his hobbies included woodworking, fishing, painting and poetry among others. He was particularly fond of the poet, Dylan Thomas.

Education

Carter attended Plains High School from 1937 to 1941 and was a good student with a keen interest in reading. He was on the school basketball team and in the Future Farmers of America organization. He began undergraduate coursework in engineering at Georgia Southwestern College in 1941 and transferred, the following year, to the Georgia Institute of Technology. While there, Carter joined the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps. He was a good student and was seen as reserved and quiet by his peers. Carter went on to receive a Bachelor of Science degree from the United States Naval Academy in 1946 and joined the U.S. Navy. Around this time, he met his future wife Rosalynn Smith through his sister Ruth. The couple got married shortly after his graduation.

Naval Career

Carter was deployed in both Pacific and Atlantic fleets from 1946 to 1953. He and Rosalynn moved often; living in Hawaii, New York, California, Connecticut and Virginia. Carter began submarine duty in 1948 and served on the USS Pomfret (SS-391). He was promoted in 1949 to lieutenant junior grade. He was assigned to the USS K-1 (SSK-1) in 1951, eventually becoming executive officer. In 1952, Carter joined the nuclear submarine program led by Captain Hyman G. Rickover who had a very strong influence on Carter.

Carter led a U.S. maintenance crew in charge of shutting down an experimental NRX reactor that had a partial meltdown on December 12, 1952. During the operation, he and other team members were lowered individually into the reactor for ninety seconds at a time to avoid radioactive exposure. Carter's role in disassembling the reactor was to turn one screw.

Return Home

Carter was attending a nuclear power plant operation course at Union College in Schenectady in 1953 when he received the news of his father’s death. He obtained a release from active duty and moved back home to run the family peanut business. Rosalynn was reluctant to leave Schenectady as they now had a family and had grown used to life there.

Carter’s inheritance was fairly small and the family lived in public housing for about a year. He planned to grow the business but struggled at first and was forced to open a number of bank lines of credit to keep the operation afloat. Rosalynn learned accounting and the two were eventually able to grow the farm into a successful business.

Early Politics

By 1961, Carter was chairman of the Sumter County school board and a member of the Baptist Church. He announced his campaign for a Georgia State Senate seat two weeks before the election in 1962 and was able to win with the help of Rosalynn who had great planning and organizational skills. Racial tensions were high when Carter took office and the Civil Rights Movement had already been underway for years. He was hesitant to speak up on civil rights issues as many of his colleagues were pro-segregationists.

After two years in office, he entered the state Democratic Executive Committee and helped to rewrite the party’s rules. He eventually became the chairman of the West Central Georgia Planning and Development Commission–giving out state grants. After his reelection to the State Senate, Carter chaired the Education Committee and at the end of his term, he announced that he would run for governor.

Governor of Georgia

Carter lost the 1966 gubernatorial campaign to Lester Maddox who was a conservative segregationist. He then returned to his agriculture business and focused on a second campaign. In this campaign, Carter took a more conservative approach that appealed to racist and segregationist ideas. He even criticized his opponent, Carl Sanders, for supporting Martin Luther King Jr. His tone changed after he was elected as the 76th governor of Georgia on January 12, 1971. In his inaugural speech, Carter said that “the time for racial discrimination is over.” This was a surprise to many and was seen as a betrayal to his segregationist supporters. He further angered the Klu Klux Klan by adding portraits of Martin Luther King Jr. and other notable black Georgians to the capitol building. On December 12, 1974, Carter announced his presidential campaign.

President of the United States

Carter had his work cut out for him as he was still fairly unknown throughout the country and was competing against sixteen other candidates in the Democratic primaries. Fellow candidates made a point of saying “Jimmy Who?”. Carter put his energy into promoting his name recognition and travelling to other states. He repeatedly stated, “My name is Jimmy Carter, and I’m running for president.” Carter gave over two hundred speeches in thirty-seven states, travelling over 80,000 km. By March 1976, his tactics appeared to be working and he was leading all active contenders for the presidential nomination including incumbent Republican president Gerald Ford. Carter chose Walter Mondale as his running mate and went on to debate Ford three times.

Carter was inaugurated as the 39th president of the United States on January 20, 1977. One of his first acts was to declare amnesty for draft evaders of the Vietnam War. The country was going through a rough economic period during Carter's tenure and was hit with stagflation and oil shortages. Some notable events that occurred during Carter's presidency were the Camp David Accords, the return of the Panama Canal, the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (Salt II) and the Iran hostage crisis. He also established diplomatic relations with China.

In 1977, Carter formed the Department of Energy to aid in the 1970s energy crisis, calling energy “the most important domestic issue that we will face while I am in office.” He called for energy conservation and alternative fuels. He reportedly reduced the heating in the White House and wore a cardigan. Carter’s relationship with Congress, though, was not ideal, which made it tough for him to pass legislation.

During his 1980 presidential campaign, Carter attacked Reagan’s stances and beliefs though the hostage crisis in Iran was dominating headlines and Carter’s support was dwindling. The two had one presidential debate on October 28, 1980. Reagan and George H.W. Bush won the election by a landslide with 489 electoral votes.

Post-presidency

In 1981, Carter’s peanut business accumulated a one-million dollar debt and Carter began writing books to pay it off. He wrote prolifically, publishing over thirty books after leaving the White House. In 1982, Carter also began teaching at Emory University.

Carter concerned himself with diplomatic efforts following his presidency. He met with the Prime Minister of Israel in 1981 and met with members of the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1983. He founded the Carter Center–a non-profit human rights organization–in 1982. Carter outlined a treaty with Kim II Sung in 1994 at the request of President Bill Clinton. In 2007, he joined Nelson Mandela and the Elders to work on human rights issues. In the same year, Carter founded the New Baptist Covenant organization.

In 2006, Carter wrote Palestine: Peace not Apartheid which became a controversial NYT best seller. Carter was accused of antisemitism by some but said, “The hope is that my book will at least stimulate a debate, which has not existed in this country. There’s never been a debate on this issue, of any significance.” Carter also said, “The greatest commitment of my life has been trying to bring peace to Israel.”

On November 19, 2023, Rosalynn passed away at the age of ninety-six. Carter said, “Rosalynn was my equal partner in everything I accomplished. She gave me wise guidance and encouragement when I needed it. As long as Rosalynn was in the world, I always knew somebody loved and supported me.”

Note: Carter and Motown founder Berry Gordy, were related through their Great-grandfather, James Thomas Gordy, who had a child with a woman he enslaved. This makes the two third cousins. Though it was due to terrible circumstances, Carter and Gordy began referring to each other as 'cuz' upon learning about their connection.