"I'll never tell a lie," Carter famously declared.
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However, the centerpieces of Carter's appeal were his outsider status and his integrity. He campaigned on such centrist themes as reducing government waste, balancing the budget and increasing government assistance to the poor. However, in a time of deep frustration with establishment politicians, Carter's anonymity proved an advantage. He thought he fit the bill on both counts.Ĭarter was one of ten candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1976, and at first, he was probably the least well known. When the Watergate scandal shattered American confidence in Washington politics, Carter further concluded that the next president would need to be an outsider. After the liberal George McGovern got pounded by Republican Richard Nixon in the 1972 presidential election, Carter decided the Democrats needed a centrist figure to regain the presidency in 1976. He so completely reversed his staunch commitment to civil rights that the liberal Atlanta Constitution Journal called him an "ignorant, racist, backward, ultra-conservative, red-necked South Georgia peanut farmer." Nevertheless, the strategy worked, and in 1970 Carter defeated Carl Sanders to become governor of Georgia.Īlways forward-thinking, Carter carefully observed the national political currents of the 1970s. Carter publicly opposed busing as a method of integrating public schools, limited public appearances with Black leaders and actively courted the endorsements of several noted segregationists, including Governor Maddox. This time around, Carter ran a campaign specifically targeted at the white rural voters who had rejected him as too liberal in 1966. Governors were limited to one term under Georgia law, though, so Carter almost immediately began positioning himself for the 1970 gubernatorial election. The eventual winner was Lester Maddox, an ardent segregationist who had infamously barricaded the doors of his restaurant and brandished an axe to ward off Black customers. However, in the midst of a white backlash to the Civil Rights Movement, Carter's liberal campaign failed to gain momentum in the Democratic primaries, and he finished a distant third place. In 1966, after briefly considering a run for the United States House of Representatives, Carter instead decided to run for governor. While on leave in the summers, Carter had reconnected with a girl named Rosalynn Smith whom he had known since childhood. Nevertheless, Carter continued to excel at academics, graduating in the top ten percent of his class in 1946. With his reflective, introverted personality and small stature (Carter stood only five feet, nine inches tall), he did not fit in well among his fellow midshipmen.
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He then applied to the highly competitive Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, which accepted him to begin studies in the summer of 1943. In 1941 Carter became the first person from his father's side of the family to graduate from high school.Ĭarter studied engineering at Georgia Southwestern Junior College before joining the Naval ROTC program to continue his engineering studies at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
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While the Great Depression hit most of the rural South very hard, the Carters managed to prosper during these years, and by the late 1930s, his father had over 200 workers employed on his farms. Despite this pervasive segregation, two of Carter's closest childhood friends were African American, as were two of the most influential adults in his life, his nanny Annie Mae Hollis and his father's worker Jack Clark. Carter attended the all-white Plains High School while the area's majority Black population received educations at home or at church. They belonged to Plains Baptist Church and insisted that Carter attend Sunday school, which his father occasionally taught. Both of Carter's parents were deeply religious.