Carter, James Earl, Jr.

AuthorJeffrey Lehman, Shirelle Phelps

Page 261

As the 39th president of the United States, Jimmy Carter represented a historical change in national politics. He was the first modern president to be elected from the Deep South. Following a successful career in Georgia?where he was a peanut farmer, state senator, and then governor?Carter entered the White House in January 1977 as a political outsider at a time of distrust in elected officials. His Baptist upbringing guided him in his vision of the office as a post to be used for the nation's moral leadership. However, his presidency was one of only limited success in both its domestic and international endeavors, and voters rejected him for a second term in 1980 by electing RONALD REAGAN in a landslide that marked a new era of Republican control of the EXECUTIVE BRANCH. After leaving Washington, D.C., Carter began a revitalized public life as a prominent HUMAN RIGHTS activist and diplomat, addressing problems of war, famine, and repression around the globe.

The small farming town of Plains, Georgia, was Carter's birthplace on October 1, 1924. James Earl Carter Sr., a veteran of WORLD WAR I, farmed cotton and had a general store. He was conservative, strict, and a firm believer in his son, whom he nicknamed "Hot," for Hotshot?because, Carter said, "Daddy never assumed I would fail at anything." Lillian Gordy Carter was a registered nurse. As devout Baptists, the parents expected much from Carter and their three other children. Religion meant steadfastness and a call to charity, as Carter's mother demonstrated by caring for patients without charge. Archery, their community, was predominantly African American. The young Carter worked and played with his black neighbors and, like them, lived without household plumbing or electricity. The experience, along with the virtues of hard work, frugality, and aspiration taught by his parents, shaped the politician he later became. After graduating at the top of his high school class, Carter paid for college with money he had earned and invested by selling peanuts as a boy.

Carter's ambition was naval service. Preparing to enter the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland, he studied mathematics at Georgia Southwestern College and then the Georgia Institute of Technology. In 1943, he

Jimmy Carter.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

entered Annapolis; he graduated in the top tenth of his class with a bachelor of sciences degree. Soon he married a long-time acquaintance, Rosalynn Smith, and began in earnest to pursue his career in the U.S. Navy. He worked as an instructor, saw battleship and submarine duty, and ultimately qualified as a sub commander. He served as senior officer aboard the Sea Wolf, the navy's second atomic submarine. He left the service in 1953 after attaining the rank of lieutenant.

"AMERICA DID NOT INVENT HUMAN RIGHTS. IN A VERY REAL SENSE ? HUMAN RIGHTS INVENTED AMERICA."

?JIMMY CARTER

The decision to walk away from a promising career came when Carter faced a personal crossroads. His father had died, leaving a powerful legacy: the one-time cotton farmer had become a successful warehouse operator, peanut seed seller, and, finally, member of the Georgia House of Representatives. Carter now followed his father's example in business and politics. In his first year as a peanut farmer, he scratched out an income of $200, yet soon the business flourished. Success in political...

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