To take the measure of Jimmy Carter as a man, a President, and the creator — along with his marriage partner — of a legacy that will surely endure for many generations to come, would require many more words than possible in a brief memorial account.
Once we recover from the sheer grief of the loss of a man who gave his life and career to being a compassionate Christian whose tolerance for all people, regardless of religion, race, ethnicity, social standing, or any of the myriad conditions and misinformed labels that separate humans from their fellows, we can appreciate the legacy of one of the greatest peacemakers and humanitarians of the post-World War II world.
Indefatigable in his determination to do as much as he could for as many people as he could for as long as he could, he embraced that challenge from his youthful days at the U.S. Naval Academy through a long life that almost encompassed a full century.
The eldest son of Earl and Lillian Carter, he grew up in the tiny agricultural community of Archery in southwestern Georgia. A white minority in his community, his closest childhood friends and unrelated caregivers were African Americans. Upon reaching his majority and gaining national and international experience in the Navy, he realized that the Jim Crow racially segregated system in his native South was unjust and degrading to Black people and to white people who supported it.
Upon returning to Plains after his father’s death in 1953, he, and his wife Rosalynn, developed their lucrative agribusiness while at the same time rejecting the White Citizen Council’s effort to maintain a racially segregated society. Upon their entry into politics in 1962, however, they bucked the traditional segregated system and used his years in the state legislature, the governor’s mansion, the White House, and the long post-presidency to fight, often at major cost to himself, for justice, equality, and peace.
In Georgia, he improved education, hung the portrait of Martin Luther King, Jr. in the State Capitol, and developed a model for using power for peace and human rights that he later took to Washington and to the world.
As President, his and the First Lady’s accomplishments during their one short term are so numerous that they challenge the ability of those scribes who attempt to record history accurately. He appointed more women, African Americans, and minorities to public office, judgeships, and international posts than any previous presidents.
He made human rights and peace the theme of his presidency. He helped Rosalynn achieve her dream of providing care for mentally- and age-challenged citizens.
Most famous for the Camp David Accords, he also negotiated the SALT II disarmament treaty with the Soviet Union, achieved normalized relations with China, returned the Panama Canal to the Panamanians, and demanded that the allies do their share to support the United Nations. In negotiations with the Soviet Union, Carter emphasized the release of political prisoners, many of them Jewish dissidents. Often he withheld financial aid from countries that abused human rights, but he always placed national security above human rights.
By treating emerging nations as potential equals, not as pawns in a contest between the superpowers, he opened communication with Central and South America, Africa, and Asia, altering the balance of power to give democracy a chance. The list goes on.
As a former President, he and Rosalynn created the Carter Center in Atlanta that carries on his work of negotiating peaceful settlements to civil wars around the globe, providing health care to some of the earth’s most disadvantaged people, and offering hope for freedom from dictatorships.
Besides creating the Rosalynn Carter Center for Caregiving in Americus, Georgia, they joined Habitat for Humanity volunteers for one week each year to build houses for the working poor both in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world, an activity that gave both them and Habitat a high public profile.
Aware that their earthly tenure would end, they used their power to create institutions and a legacy that will keep their work for peace and human rights alive and vigorous for generations. Those who feel the personal pain from the loss of a relative, a friend, a compassionate politician, or one who used his power to save the lives of them or their ancestors may take comfort in the fact that his legacy will live on, creating an enduring better world.
E. Stanly Godbold, Jr. is Professor Emeritus of History at Mississippi State University. His two-volume biography of the Carters (Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter: The Georgia Years, 1924-1974, published in 2010, and Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter: Power and Human Rights, 1975-2020, published in 2022) establish him as the Carters’ preeminent biographer. He and his wife, Jeannie, live in Starkville.
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