Born in Plains, Georgia in October of 1924, Carter at first seemed destined for a life in the navy, graduating from the Naval Academy in 1946 and serving aboard submarines until 1953. He was called home to Plains that year by family crisis — his father had died leaving the family farm in desperate straits — forcing a reluctant Jimmy (and his even more reluctant wife, Rosalynn) to return to manage it.
The lure of public service never was far away, however, and, with prosperity restored by the late 1950s, Carter turned to politics, serving in the Georgia State Senate before a failed run for governor in 1966 (he was ultimately defeated by the arch-segregationist Lester Maddox). Though Carter himself had demonstrated a personal opposition to racism that was rare among Georgia whites of his background, he proved politician enough to court white supremacists in his second run for governor in 1970, a move that may well have proved decisive in his eventual victory.
As governor, Carter returned to his more anti-racist roots, denouncing segregation, working to improve black participation in the Georgia government, and ensuring equal funding for minority school districts. His reform of the state bureaucracy is considered by many to be his main achievement while in Atlanta, demonstrating an interest in governmental “efficiency” and cost cutting that he would carry with him to the presidency. He was in many ways a post–civil rights movement resurrection of the sort of “good government” Progressive Democrats represented by figures like Woodrow Wilson.
Despite only serving a single term as governor, Carter sought the Democratic nomination for the presidency in 1976. Though no longer willing to court segregationists, Carter did prove once again eager to seem all things to all people. The New York Times that year reported that voters on the Right tended to view Carter as one of their own, as did…
Auteur: Sean T. Byrnes
