Jimmy Carter, Raising Crops and Livestock, and Health and Hygiene, in Rural Georgia During the Depression
Civil Rights

Jimmy Carter, Raising Crops and Livestock, and Health and Hygiene, in Rural Georgia During the Depression

Although both blacks and whites experienced health and hygiene challenges during the Depression, poor health was more prevalent among black laborers and sharecroppers. Jimmy Carter remembers: “The life expectancy of black men and women was less than fifty years.” “During most of the year, they ate only two meals a day, usually cornmeal, fatback, molasses, and perhaps sweet potatoes. The more industrious families also had small gardens that provided some seasonal corn, Irish potatoes, collards, turnips, and cabbage, with a few rows of peas and beans planted alongside the garden fence. The combination of constant and heavy work, inadequate diet, and excessive use of tobacco was devastating to the health of our poorer neighbors.” His mother encouraged her black neighbors to grow vegetables in their own gardens, and shared with them the vegetables from the Carter family garden. […]

Jimmy Carter: Christmas in Plains Compared to Christmas in the White House and Afterwards
Current Events and History

Jimmy Carter: Christmas in Plains Compared to Christmas in the White House and Afterwards

Jimmy Carter grew up on his family farm in Archery, Georgia, several miles from Plains. He remembers: “In those earlier days, all my close neighbors were black families.” Their children “were my intimate friends with whom I played, fought, fished, hunted, and worked with in the cotton and peanut fields that were owned by my father.” When he went into town to sell peanuts, and when he started school, he felt that he “was in an alien environment in Plains, away from my black friends.”
Jimmy Carter continues: “The Great Depression was a time of almost incredible poverty, not only in rural Georgia but all over the country. Although my father was a landowner, cash money was scarce for us and for everyone else. Land seemed to have the only permanent economic value, and hard work was the key to survival. The celebration of Christmas during these times was quite different from what we know today: much more frugal, but with a degree of personal intimacy that brings back warm recollections.” […]

Jimmy Carter Biography Presidency Carter Center
Abortion

Jimmy Carter, His Presidency, and Founding the Carter Center

Jimmy Carter was elected as President when many voters wanted an honest President after the nation witnessed the Watergate scandal and coverup by a criminal president who was facing impeachment. Not only was Jimmy Carter seen as an honest man, but he was also a sincere born-again Christian. But his support for civil rights turned many white Christians against him. In the introduction, Jimmy Carter proclaims: “Vice President Mondale summarized our administration by saying, ‘We told the truth, we obeyed the law, we kept the peace.’ I would add, ‘We championed human rights.’” […]

Carter on the Virtues of Aging and Retirement
Current Events and History

Jimmy Carter on the Virtues of Aging and Retirement

Who do we consider to be old? Jimmy Carter recollects: “In general, our own age determines who we consider to be an old person. When I was in the navy and serving on my first ships, I assumed that officers and men who were retiring after twenty years of service were old, and that those who held on for a maximum of thirty years were almost too set in their ways to deal with the changing realities of modern navy life.” […]