Jimmy Carter was born in 1924, in the heart of the Jim Crow era, and in the center of the Jim Crow south.
This was one year before the Scopes Monkey Trial, five years before the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The year saw the KKK march down Pennsylvania Avenue in full regalia and with police protection.
Protection also came from the faith Carter’s family practiced. Alcohol was illegal, abortion was strictly illegal, but lynching was very legal. The Southern Baptist Convention into which Carter was born had supported slavery, it supported segregation, and they called it all God’s law.
It has been hard for me to understand, just how and where this good man was raised, the beliefs he overcame to become what he was. I didn’t even start to understand it until I moved here, after his presidency, and saw how the struggle continues today, on both sides.
Carter didn’t enter politics until he was 42, running for State Senate. While Governor in 1973 he appeared on the game show “What’s My Life,” saying he was running for President. While the panelists weren’t blindfolded, no one recognized him. His entire political life lasted just 14 years.
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