Jimmy Carter’s death this week was a stark reminder of how far our country has strayed from the mission of healing America’s racial divide and devoting our time and resources to uplifting the poor, the hungry, the homeless and the helpless in the richest nation on earth.
In his 100 years on this planet, the humble Georgia peanut farmer who grew up surrounded by the rhythms of gospel music never stopped working to find ways to make the world a more peaceful and welcoming place for all God’s children. He used the power of his offices as Georgia governor and U.S. president to advance diversity and representation in the corridors of power. He launched ambitious initiatives to expand education and training for marginalized communities. He authored measures to make energy more affordable for the poor. He boldly tackled seemingly intractable conflicts in the Middle East to reach peace agreements between Israeli and Arab antagonists. He spoke plainly about the challenges facing America and the world and tried to do something about them.
When Carter’s hold on the White House fell victim to energy woes and the Iranian hostage crisis in 1980, he spent the next 44 years continuing to follow the Gospel mandate of working for peace and building the infrastructure of a more humane society, particularly his support of Habitat for Humanity and his personal example of wielding a hammer for social justice. A lifelong Southern Baptist, he taught Sunday school in his local congregation for decades and faithfully attended services there with his wife of 77 years, Rosalynn Carter, who died in 2023.
When James Earl Carter Jr., was sworn in as America’s 39th president in 1977, he came to office in a nation morally battered by the Watergate scandal and the unraveling of our misadventures in Vietnam. The U.S. Naval Academy graduate rode into office promising to restore dignity, honesty and faith in U.S. governance and to promote human rights abroad. In many ways, he ran unabashedly as a “race man,” having compiled a progressive record of elevating African Americans to high positions in Georgia’s government and turning his back on the entrenched Dixiecrat establishment of the Jim Crow South epitomized by his predecessor, Lester Maddox.
“Daddy King,” the father of civil rights martyr Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., became a close adviser to the populist Georgia governor and he hung a portrait of the Nobel Peace Prize winner in the capitol to send an unmistakable message about inclusion in the “New South.” His life was deeply touched by close relationships with African Americans who worked on his family farm in Plains, Georgia, and populated the red-dirt land of his native state.
During his improbable grassroots campaign for the White House, Carter bunked with families and flew coach to save on costs. As a self-described born-again Christian, his religiosity was off-putting to sectarian snobs but it cemented his standing with vast swaths of the African American electorate. Jimmy Carter set the model for how future Democratic presidents would campaign — and later govern — in a way that included African Americans as partners and Black interests as legitimate concerns worthy of federal attention.
Before Carter, Lyndon Johnson had Black advisers and officials in his orbit, but those relationships unfolded in the context of conflict over civil rights legislation. John Kennedy and his administration were slow to embrace African Americans as a Democratic constituency and advocate for civil rights. Carter, elected in 1976, benefitted from the groundwork Kennedy and Johnson laid and made the most of it. He defeated President Gerald Ford, damaged by his association with and pardon of disgraced ex-President Richard Nixon, with a narrow popular vote win and a margin of 57 electoral votes. Blacks favored Carter over Ford by a four-to-one margin.
At the outset of his administration, power in Washington, D.C., was a captive of eastern seaboard elites from both parties and southern segregationists, all Democrats, who dominated key committees on Capitol Hill by virtue of long seniority. Carter upset the balance by making record appointments of Blacks to the federal judiciary — a total of 40 in his single term — naming the first African American woman, Patricia Harris, to a cabinet position and making every executive agency more reflective of America.
He was not afraid to take political risks for peace, engineering the Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt to ratchet down tensions in the world’s most volatile neighborhood. One of his key appointments was sending his good friend Andrew Young, the first Black elected to Congress from Georgia since Reconstruction, to the United Nations as an ambassador who would take on the hidebound State Department and crack open the door to dialogue with Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Young’s freewheeling diplomatic style would cost him his job but would also lay the groundwork for future peace talks.
In Jimmy Carter’s Washington, Aretha Franklin sang at the inaugural ball. Vernon Jordan was a key adviser. Dizzy Gillespie, Herbie Hancock, Dexter Gordon, George Benson, Ron Carter and Tony Williams played at a jazz event. Country musicians like Willie Nelson and rock bands like the Allman Brothers — whose sound derived from Black blues — found a fan in the White House.
To anyone living in Washington during the Carter administration, the change in style and substance from the imperial presidency of Richard Nixon — and the short interregnum of Gerald Ford — was obvious. While the chattering class of Georgetown rolled their eyes at the intrepid “Georgia Mafia” who wielded power, the new gang in town launched new cabinet secretaries in education and energy to address challenges at home rather than foreign capitals. The Comprehensive Employment and Training Act nearly tripled federal spending on jobs and education opportunities, as CETA funds opened the door to employment for millions of Americans living in marginalized communities.
The fall of the Shah in Iran in 1978 set the stage for spiking energy costs and the hostage crisis, twin shadows that ushered in Carter’s loss to Ronald Reagan in 1980. Also damaging was the Democratic primary challenge by U.S. Sen. Edward M. “Ted” Kennedy, prompting Carter to famously promising to “whip his ass.” Carter did prevail but not without the Massachusetts senator managing to beat the incumbent in the March primary in the Bay State while dividing Black loyalties around the country.
Jimmy Carter might have lost his title but he never abandoned his faith or his work ethic, writing dozens of books, making his Carter Center the world’s premiere arbiter of fair elections, and continuing to watch out for the poor and the powerless. As Washington and the world watch warily for the second coming of Donald Trump to the nation’s capital, Jimmy Carter’s life stands as a beacon of decency and reconciliation whose example endures as a challenge to us all.
Ronald Mitchell
Publisher and editor, Bay State Banner
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