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"James Earl Carter" redirects here. For his father, see James Earl Carter Sr. For other uses, see Jimmy Carter (disambiguation).

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Jimmy Carter
Portrait of Jimmy Carter in a dark blue suit
Official portrait, 1978
39th President of the United States
In office
January 20, 1977 – January 20, 1981
Vice PresidentWalter Mondale
Preceded byGerald Ford
Succeeded byRonald Reagan
76th Governor of Georgia
In office
January 12, 1971 – January 14, 1975
LieutenantLester Maddox
Preceded byLester Maddox
Succeeded byGeorge Busbee
Member of the Georgia State Senate
from the 14th district
In office
January 14, 1963 – January 9, 1967
Preceded byConstituency established
Succeeded byHugh Carter
Personal details
Born
James Earl Carter Jr.

(1924-10-01) October 1, 1924 (age 100)
Plains, Georgia, U.S.
Political partyDemocratic
Spouse
​
​
(m. 1946; died 2023)​
Children4, including Jack and Amy
Parents
RelativesCarter family
EducationUnited States Naval Academy (BS)
Civilian awardsFull list
SignatureCursive signature in ink
Military service
Branch/serviceUnited States Navy
Years of service
  • 1946–1953 (active)
  • 1953–1961 (reserve)
RankLieutenant
Military awards
Jimmy Carter's voice
Carter speaks on the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Recorded January 4, 1980

James Earl Carter Jr. (born October 1, 1924) is an American politician and humanitarian who served from 1977 to 1981 as the 39th president of the United States. A member of the Democratic Party, he served from 1963 to 1967 in the Georgia State Senate and from 1971 to 1975 as the 76th governor of Georgia. Carter is the longest-lived president in U.S. history and the first to live to 100 years of age.

Carter was born and raised in Plains, Georgia. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1946 and joined the U.S. Navy's submarine service. Carter returned home after his military service and revived his family's peanut-growing business. Opposing racial segregation, Carter supported the growing civil rights movement, and became an activist within the Democratic Party. He served in the Georgia State Senate from 1963 to 1967 and then as governor of Georgia from 1971 to 1975. As a dark-horse candidate not well known outside Georgia, Carter won the Democratic nomination and narrowly defeated the incumbent president, Republican Gerald Ford, in the 1976 election.

Carter pardoned all Vietnam War draft evaders on his second day in office. He created a national energy policy that included conservation, price control, and new technology. Carter successfully pursued the Camp David Accords, the Panama Canal Treaties, and the second round of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks. He also confronted stagflation. His administration established the U.S. Department of Energy and the Department of Education. The end of his presidency was marked by the Iran hostage crisis, an energy crisis, the Three Mile Island accident, the Nicaraguan Revolution, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In response to the invasion, Carter escalated the Cold War by ending détente, imposing a grain embargo against the Soviets, enunciating the Carter Doctrine, and leading the multinational boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. He lost the 1980 presidential election in a landslide to Ronald Reagan, the Republican nominee.

After leaving the presidency, Carter established the Carter Center to promote and expand human rights; in 2002 he received a Nobel Peace Prize for his work in relation to it. He traveled extensively to conduct peace negotiations, monitor elections, and further the eradication of infectious diseases. Carter is a key figure in the nonprofit housing organization Habitat for Humanity. He has also written numerous books, ranging from political memoirs to poetry, while continuing to comment on global affairs, including two books on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Polls of historians and political scientists generally rank Carter as a below-average president, though scholars and the public more favorably view his post-presidency, which is the longest in U.S. history.

Early life

[edit]
A rural storehouse with a small windmill next to it
The Carter family store, part of Carter's Boyhood Farm, in Plains, Georgia

James Earl Carter Jr. was born October 1, 1924, in Plains, Georgia, at the Wise Sanitarium, where his mother worked as a registered nurse.[1] Carter thus became the first American president born in a hospital.[2] He is the eldest child of Bessie Lillian Gordy and James Earl Carter Sr., and a descendant of English immigrant Thomas Carter, who settled in the Colony of Virginia in 1635.[3][4] In Georgia, numerous generations of Carters worked as cotton farmers.[5] Plains was a boomtown of 600 people at the time of Carter's birth. His father was a successful local businessman who ran a general store and was an investor in farmland.[6] Carter's father had previously served as a reserve second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps during World War I.[6]

During Carter's infancy, his family moved several times, settling on a dirt road in nearby Archery, which was almost entirely populated by impoverished African American families.[2][7] His family eventually had three more children: Gloria, Ruth, and Billy.[8] Carter got along well with his parents even though his mother was often absent during his childhood since she worked long hours, and although his father was staunchly pro-segregation, he allowed Jimmy to befriend the black farmhands' children.[9] Carter was an enterprising teenager who was given his own acre of Earl's farmland, where he grew, packaged, and sold peanuts.[10] Carter also rented out a section of tenant housing that he had purchased.[2]

Education

[edit]

Carter attended Plains High School from 1937 to 1941, graduating from the eleventh grade since the school did not have a twelfth grade.[11] By that time, Archery and Plains had been impoverished by the Great Depression, but the family benefited from New Deal farming subsidies, and Carter's father took a position as a community leader.[10][12] Carter himself was a diligent student with a fondness for reading.[13] A popular anecdote holds that he was passed over for valedictorian after he and his friends skipped school to venture downtown in a hot rod. Carter's truancy was mentioned in a local newspaper, although it is not clear he would have otherwise been valedictorian.[14] As an adolescent, Carter played on the Plains High School basketball team, and also joined Future Farmers of America, which helped him develop a lifelong interest in woodworking.[14]

Carter had long dreamed of attending the United States Naval Academy.[10] In 1941, he started undergraduate coursework in engineering at Georgia Southwestern College in nearby Americus, Georgia.[15] The next year, Carter transferred to the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, where civil rights icon Blake Van Leer was president.[16] While at Georgia Tech, Carter took part in the Reserve Officers' Training Corps.[17] In 1943, he received an appointment to the Naval Academy from U.S. Representative Stephen Pace, and Carter graduated with a Bachelor of Science in 1946.[18][17] He was a good student but was seen as reserved and quiet, in contrast to the academy's culture of aggressive hazing of freshmen.[19] While at the Academy, Carter fell in love with Rosalynn Smith, a friend of his sister Ruth.[20] The two wed shortly after his graduation in 1946, and were married until her death on November 19, 2023.[21][22] Carter was a sprint football player for the Navy Midshipmen.[23] He graduated 60th out of 821 midshipmen in the class of 1947[a] with a Bachelor of Science degree and was commissioned as an ensign.[25]

[edit]
Jimmy Carter similing towards the camera, while Rosalynn Smith and his mother are fixing his Naval Academy uniform
Carter with Rosalynn Smith and his mother at his graduation from the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, June 5, 1946

From 1946 to 1953, the Carters lived in Virginia, Hawaii, Connecticut, New York, and California, during his deployments in the Atlantic and Pacific fleets.[26] In 1948, he began officer training for submarine duty and served aboard USS Pomfret.[27] Carter was promoted to lieutenant junior grade in 1949, and his service aboard Pomfret included a simulated war patrol to the western Pacific and Chinese coast from January to March of that year.[28] In 1951, Carter was assigned to the diesel/electric USS K-1 (SSK-1), qualified for command, and served in several positions, to include executive officer.[29]

In 1952, Carter began an association with the Navy's fledgling nuclear submarine program, led then by captain Hyman G. Rickover.[30] Rickover had high standards and demands for his men and machines, and Carter later said that, next to his parents, Rickover had the greatest influence on his life.[31] Carter was sent to the Naval Reactors Branch of the Atomic Energy Commission in Washington, D.C., for three-month temporary duty, while Rosalynn moved with their children to Schenectady, New York.[32]

On December 12, 1952, an accident with the experimental NRX reactor at Atomic Energy of Canada's Chalk River Laboratories caused a partial meltdown, resulting in millions of liters of radioactive water flooding the reactor building's basement. This left the reactor's core ruined.[33] Carter was ordered to Chalk River to lead a U.S. maintenance crew that joined other American and Canadian service personnel to assist in the shutdown of the reactor.[34] The painstaking process required each team member to don protective gear and be lowered individually into the reactor for 90 seconds at a time, limiting their exposure to radioactivity while they disassembled the crippled reactor. When Carter was lowered in, his job was simply to turn a single screw.[35] During and after his presidency, Carter said that his experience at Chalk River had shaped his views on atomic energy and led him to cease the development of a neutron bomb.[36]

In March 1953, Carter began a six-month course in nuclear power plant operation at Union College in Schenectady.[26] His intent was to eventually work aboard USS Seawolf, which was intended to be the second U.S. nuclear submarine.[37] His plans changed when his father died of pancreatic cancer in July, two months before construction of Seawolf began, and Carter obtained a release from active duty so he could take over the family peanut business.[38][39] Deciding to leave Schenectady proved difficult, as Rosalynn had grown comfortable with their life there.[40][41] She later said that returning to small-town life in Plains seemed "a monumental step backward."[42] Carter left active duty on October 9, 1953.[43][44] He served in the inactive Navy Reserve until 1961 and left the service with the rank of lieutenant.[45] Carter's awards include the American Campaign Medal, World War II Victory Medal, China Service Medal, and National Defense Service Medal.[46] As a submarine officer, he also earned the "dolphin" badge.[47]

Farming

[edit]

After debt settlements and division of his father's estate among its heirs, Jimmy inherited comparatively little.[48] For a year, he, Rosalynn, and their three sons lived in public housing in Plains.[b] Carter was knowledgeable in scientific and technological subjects, and he set out to expand the family's peanut-growing business.[50] Transitioning from the Navy to an agribusinessman was difficult as his first-year harvest failed due to a drought, and Carter had to open several bank lines of credit to keep the farm afloat.[51] Meanwhile, he took classes and studied agriculture while Rosalynn learned accounting to manage the business's books.[52] Though they barely broke even the first year, the Carters grew the business and became quite successful.[49][52]

Early political career (1963–1971)

[edit]

Georgia state senator (1963–1967)

[edit]

As racial tension inflamed in Plains by the 1954 Supreme Court of the United States ruling in Brown v. Board of Education,[53] Carter favored racial tolerance and integration but often kept those feelings to himself to avoid making enemies. By 1961, Carter began to speak more prominently of integration as a member of the Baptist Church and chairman of the Sumter County school board.[54][55] In 1962, he announced his campaign for an open Georgia State Senate seat 15 days before the election.[56] Rosalynn, who had an instinct for politics and organization, was instrumental to his campaign. While early counting of the ballots showed Carter trailing his opponent, Homer Moore, this was later proven to be the result of fraudulent voting. The fraud was found to have been orchestrated by Joe Hurst, the chairman of the Democratic Party in Quitman County.[56] Carter challenged the election result, which was confirmed fraudulent in an investigation. Following this, another election was held, in which Carter won against Moore as the sole Democratic candidate, with a vote margin of 3,013 to 2,182.[57]

The civil rights movement was well underway when Carter took office. He and his family had become staunch John F. Kennedy supporters. Carter remained relatively quiet on the issue at first, even as it polarized much of the county, to avoid alienating his segregationist colleagues. Carter did speak up on a few divisive issues, giving speeches against literacy tests and against an amendment to the Georgia Constitution that he felt implied a compulsion to practice religion.[58] Carter entered the state Democratic Executive Committee two years into office, where he helped rewrite the state party's rules. He became the chairman of the West Central Georgia Planning and Development Commission, which oversaw the disbursement of federal and state grants for projects such as historic site restoration.[59]

When Bo Callaway was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1964, Carter immediately began planning to challenge him. The two had previously clashed over which two-year college would be expanded to a four-year college program by the state, and Carter saw Callaway—who had switched to the Republican Party—as a rival who represented aspects of politics he despised.[60] Carter was reelect

  1. ^ Godbold 2010, p. 9.
  2. ^ a b c Bourne 1997, pp. 11–32.
  3. ^ Kaufman & Kaufman 2013, p. 70.
  4. ^ Carter 2012, p. 10.
  5. ^ Bourne 1997, p. 9.
  6. ^ a b Bourne 1997, p. 114.
  7. ^ Biven 2002, p. 57.
  8. ^ Flippen 2011, p. 25.
  9. ^ Newton 2016, p. 172.
  10. ^ a b c Hamilton 2005, p. 334.
  11. ^ National Park Service 2020.
  12. ^ Hayward 2004, The Plain Man from Plains.
  13. ^ Hobkirk 2002, p. 8.
  14. ^ a b Bourne 1997, pp. 33–43.
  15. ^ Panton 2022, p. 99.
  16. ^ Rattini 2020.
  17. ^ a b Balmer 2014, p. 34.
  18. ^ Hobkirk 2002, p. 38.
  19. ^ Kaufman & Kaufman 2013, p. 62.
  20. ^ Wertheimer 2004, p. 343.
  21. ^ Bourne 1997, pp. 44–55.
  22. ^ Barrow & Warren 2023.
  23. ^ Hingston 2016.
  24. ^ Argetsinger 1996.
  25. ^ Alter 2020, p. 59.
  26. ^ a b Zelizer 2010, pp. 11–12.
  27. ^ Thomas 1978, p. 18.
  28. ^ Nijnatten 2012, p. 77.
  29. ^ Jimmy Carter Library and Museum 2004.
  30. ^ Hambley 2008, p. 202.
  31. ^ Bourne 1997, pp. 72–77.
  32. ^ Bourne 1997, p. 74.
  33. ^ Frank 1995, p. 554.
  34. ^ Martel 2008, p. 64.
  35. ^ Marguet 2022, p. 262.
  36. ^ Milnes 2009.
  37. ^ Naval History and Heritage Command 1997.
  38. ^ Wead 2005, p. 404.
  39. ^ Panton 2022, p. 100.
  40. ^ Wooten 1978, p. 270.
  41. ^ Schneider & Schneider 2005, p. 310.
  42. ^ Bourne 1997, p. 79.
  43. ^ Bourne 1997, pp. 77–81.
  44. ^ Hayward 2009, p. 23.
  45. ^ Eckstein 2015.
  46. ^ Suciu 2020.
  47. ^ Naval History and Heritage Command 2023.
  48. ^ Mukunda 2022, p. 105.
  49. ^ a b Bourne 1997, pp. 83–91.
  50. ^ Kaufman 2016, p. 66.
  51. ^ Gherman 2004, p. 38.
  52. ^ a b Morris 1996, p. 115.
  53. ^ Gherman 2004, p. 40.
  54. ^ Bourne 1997, pp. 92–108.
  55. ^ Donica & Piccotti 2018.
  56. ^ a b Carter 1992, pp. 83–87.
  57. ^ Bourne 1997, pp. 108–132.
  58. ^ Bourne 1997, pp. 132–140.
  59. ^ Ryan 2006, p. 37.
  60. ^ Bourne 1997, pp. 132–145.


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