The Apostle of Democracy

When Jimmy Carter was inaugurated in 1971 as Georgia’s 76th governor, he famously announced, “I say to you quite frankly that the time for racial discrimination is over. No poor, rural, weak or Black person should ever again have to bear the additional burden of being deprived of the opportunity of an education, a job or simple justice.”

Image was part of a cover story in Georgia Trend Magazine in 2012 on the Center’s 30th anniversary. Photo credit: Jennifer Stalcup.

It was a strong and – to many – a surprising statement, given that Carter had run a very conservative campaign in the Democratic primary to defeat moderate former Gov. Carl Sanders. But it was nonetheless pure Jimmy Carter. In many ways, it summed up the man himself and presaged the strength, resolve and capacity for surprise that would characterize the rest of his life and take him in a very short time from “Jimmy Who?” status to the White House. As president, it led him to make human rights a permanent part of the political conversation. Post-presidency, it would lead to a career as a revered global peacemaker and healer who brought to bear the resources of The Carter Center, which he co-founded with his wife, Rosalynn, to combat a litany of neglected tropical diseases in remote parts of the world.

Many have called him the most successful ex-president in history. The late political commentator Bill Shipp wrote in Georgia Trend in 2003, “The end of the Carter presidency was the beginning of the most distinguished part of his career,” and “he became the foremost apostle of American-style democracy throughout the world.”

In his 2015 book A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety, Carter acknowledged that the four years spent in the White House were the pinnacle of his political life but says, “Those years, though, do not dominate my chain of memories, and there was never an orderly or planned path to get there during my early life. At each step in my career, I made somewhat peremptory decisions about the next one.”

The Beginnings

New South Governor: Carter was elected to lead Georgia in 1970: photo contributed.

Carter was born in 1924 and grew up in rural Southwest Georgia, first in Plains and then on a farm in a nearby community called Archery.

“As a child I never thought about social or legal distinctions between our White family and the African American families that surrounded us in Archery,” he has written. “I knew, of course, that our house was larger than theirs, that my father gave the orders on the farm, and that we had an automobile or a pickup truck while our neighbors walked or rode in a wagon or on a mule. I assumed that these advantages accrued to us because Daddy worked harder and was fortunate in owning the land on which we lived.”

Carter attended public school in Plains, studied at Georgia Southwestern College (now Georgia Southwestern State University) and Georgia Tech, then received an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy from which he graduated in 1946 and began his career in the Navy. He and Rosalynn, whom he had known since she was born, were married shortly after his graduation.

When his father died in 1953, the Carters and their three sons (daughter Amy was born in 1967) moved back to Plains so Carter could take over the family peanut farm and supply business. After some initial struggles, the endeavors prospered, and Carter involved himself in civic affairs. He and Rosalynn were active in the local Baptist church, where they both taught Sunday School. Carter continued to teach there well into his 90s.

He’s described himself as “reasonably proficient in farming, forestry, business management and leadership in statewide organizations related to these duties.” Notably, he resisted pressure to join the White Citizens Council, a White supremacist organization created after the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed school segregation.

He decided, somewhat impulsively, to run for the Georgia Senate in 1962, after a U.S. Supreme Court decision led to a restructuring of that body. Carter won that election, but not without some drama over voter fraud in Quitman County where 330 people had cast 496 ballots, mostly to the benefit of his opponent.

It was during that campaign that Carter realized how valuable Rosalynn was as a political partner. “I was surprised to discover that she liked the art of politics … she liked the entire political process better than I did.” This served both Carters well during his time in the Governor’s Mansion and the White House and again during their active years with The Carter Center.

After his second term in the state Senate, Carter abruptly entered the race for governor and lost to arch-segregationist Lester Maddox. He ran again in 1970 and won but alienated many of his conservative supporters with that inaugural speech. He has written of his campaign, “I welcomed the support of more conservative Georgians … but I was never tempted to indicate any deviation from the moderate racial beliefs I had always exhibited, in the Navy and during my time in Plains.”

From Atlanta to Washington

Making History: As president, Carter brokered the Camp David Accords between Egypt’s Anwar Sadat (left) and Israel’s Menachem Begin (right) in 1978, leading to a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel: photo The Carter Center.

As governor, Carter was limited to one term and somewhat hampered by the fact that his old nemesis, Maddox, was lieutenant governor. Bill Shipp wrote that his tenure as governor rated “an unenthusiastic ‘good’ to ‘moderate’ grade.” Perhaps his signature achievement
was streamlining the state government, reducing the number of departments and agencies from more than 300 to 22 and consolidating almost 20 bond issuers to one, which resulted in triple-A bond ratings.

Charles Bullock, a Southern political scholar who holds the University of Georgia’s Richard B. Russell Chair in Political Science, says, “You could almost make the argument that he was at the dawn of modernization of Georgia politics.” In the 1960s, he says, “Georgia was very much a rural-dominated state.”

Nationally, Carter tended to be grouped with other young progressive governors elected at the same time, like Dale Bumpers of Arkansas and Florida’s Reubin Askew. Even though he realized the 1972 Democratic Presidential nominee, George McGovern, had little chance in the South, Carter acknowledged that he would have been glad to be selected as his running mate.

After McGovern’s failed campaign, some Carter friends and advisors began urging him to make a presidential run, essentially filling the political middle ground between George Wallace and Ted Kennedy. Carter has said he was somewhat embarrassed by the idea, but he got valuable encouragement from Dean Rusk, the Georgian who served as secretary of state under John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. He soon began to campaign in earnest, employing many of the same techniques that had helped him win the governorship, with the addition of the famed “Peanut Brigade,” a loose organization of supporters who traveled the country to secure votes for their candidate.

Carter defeated Republican President Gerald Ford and was inaugurated in January 1977 as the 39th president of the United States. His tenure was plagued by the energy crisis, an inflationary economy and the hostage crisis in Iran. Still, his crowning achievement was brokering the Camp David Accords in 1978 that led to a peace treaty the following year between Israel and Egypt, the first treaty between Israel and any of its Arab neighbors. This, along with his post-presidential work, helped him win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.

Yet the accords failed to win him a second term, overshadowed as they were by a disappointing domestic record. Says Bullock, “For most American voters, they do not make up their minds who they are going to vote for in terms of what’s happening in international affairs.” In other words, what’s happening on the home front is more important to them.

Global Honor: Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his efforts brokering the Camp David Accords and his post-presidential work with The Carter Center: photo The Carter Center.

But there were solid accomplishments that Carter is perhaps belatedly receiving credit for. Author Jonathan Alter, in his biography His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life, writes that he was the first president to “grapple seriously” with energy independence and that Carter presided over the second great public health revolution in American history: “Carter’s quiet, piecemeal evolution controlled industrial waste.” (The first revolution, at the beginning of the 20th century, was controlling human sewage.)

During his administration, the Environmental Protection Agency moved aggressively, Alter writes, and “Carter-era ideas would eventually find their way into laws and regulations with far-reaching implications.”

The Glory Years

“I Know What We Can Do For The Future”: Former President Carter, Rosalynn Carter, and President Reagan and Nancy Reagan attended the opening of The Carter Center in 1982: photo The Carter Center.

The resounding defeat in his quest for a second term left Carter dispirited but resolved to apply his talents and his energy to something big. In A Full Life, he describes the birth of The Carter Center: “I awoke one night after a few hours of sleep, called Rosalynn, and said, ‘I know what we can do for the future. We can create a place in Atlanta near our presidential library and museum and invite people to come there, like Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin came to Camp David. I can offer my services as a mediator to help prevent or resolve conflicts, either within or between nations.’”

Working with Emory University, the Carters established the center in 1982 and began raising funds. It was to become the former president’s greatest success, in ways he had not anticipated. He determined that the center would be nonpartisan and innovative and would not duplicate efforts that other organizations were addressing successfully and, typically, that “we would not be afraid of possible failure if our goals were worthwhile.”

The center expanded operations into 80 countries, promoting peace, human rights, democracy and freedom, and better healthcare. Carter monitored elections and undertook some diplomatic missions – not always to the delight of subsequent presidents. But it is under the umbrella of healthcare that The Carter Center has made its most far-reaching achievements, battling diseases virtually unknown in developed countries.

It started with the center’s work to combat Guinea worm disease in countries in Asia and Africa, arguably its greatest success and Carter’s continuing obsession. People usually get the disease by drinking water contaminated with the worms’ larvae, which then mate and mature inside the body. Eventually the male worm dies, but the female grows to a meter or more in length and emerges from the skin through an extremely painful blister, earning its description as a “fiery serpent.” There is no vaccine and no treatment other than the traditional method of placing a stick near the blister to wrap the worm around as it comes out.

Healthcare as a Human Right: Carter comforts a young girl with Guinea worm disease in Ghana 2007. The disease is close to eradication thanks to The Carter Center’s work: photo The Carter Center.

The Carter Center’s efforts have involved thousands of volunteers working in affected countries to provide preventive education, mainly teaching people to filter water before they drink it, a simple but highly effective tactic. When the Center began its campaign in 1986 – after former Carter White House staffer Peter Bourne, M.D., presented the idea – there were some 3.5 million cases of Guinea worm in 21 countries. Carter brought in heavy-hitter Donald Hopkins, M.D., who had been part of the effort that eradicated smallpox.

The campaign has been phenomenally successful. By 2022, there were only 13 human cases reported worldwide – in Chad, Ethiopia, South Sudan and the Central African Republic. The center believes the disease is close to eradication, and Carter said at a 2015 press conference that he’d “like to see the last Guinea worm die before I do.”

In a 2017 interview with Georgia Trend, Carter told a story from one of his trips to Africa, when he was greeted by a young boy who called out, “Look out, Guinea worm. Jimmy Carter is coming.”

The Guinea worm success spurred efforts to combat other neglected diseases around the world, including river blindness, trachoma (an eye disease), lymphatic filariasis (elephantiasis), schistosomiasis (a parasitic disease) and malaria in Hispaniola, drawing on Carter’s belief that access to healthcare is a human right.

A Well-Lived Life

Hands-on Help: Carter works at a Habitat for Humanity build: photo The Carter Center.

The Carters stepped down from the center’s board leadership in 2015, in favor of their grandson Jason Carter, a former Georgia legislator and 2014 Democratic gubernatorial candidate, who is now board chair.

Another notable part of the Carters’ post-White House years was their involvement in Habitat for Humanity, which has built more than a million homes for the poor. The couple became some of Habitat’s most ardent and prominent supporters, as well as hands-on volunteers. They devoted time every year to construction work, which allowed Carter to use his carpentry skills, during an annual week-long homebuilding blitz named the Carter Work Project.

“President Carter’s legacy of servant leadership has inspired millions,” Habitat for Humanity International CEO Jonathan Reckford said in a statement. “Simply put, he and Mrs. Carter helped open doors for millions of families throughout the world.”

Although Carter beat melanoma skin cancer that had spread to his brain in 2015, he experienced a series of falls in recent years and in February entered home hospice in Plains. Rosalynn has been diagnosed with dementia.

Man of Faith: Carter continued to teach Sunday School at Maranantha Baptist Church well into his 90s, drawing people from all over the world to attend the small church in Plains: photo LOC/Carol M. Highsmith.

Summing up Jimmy Carter is a daunting task, and most who attempt it end up focusing on the man himself, rather than his achievements. Georgia Trend columnist Tharon Johnson wrote that what makes Carter so special “is that he is a great man … because of his selfless dedication to the betterment of the world.”

Jonathan Alter ends his Carter biography this way: “By the time he was in his [mid-90s], the shortcomings and contradictions of Jimmy Carter’s long life seemed even to his critics to have given way to an appreciation of his core decency. Beyond his heavenly reward lay his earthly example: a life of ceaseless effort, not just for himself but for the world he helped shape.”