Jimmy Carter’s Youth and Navy Years: From Plowing With Mules to Nuclear Submarines

What can we learn by reflecting on Jimmy Carter’s youth, school years, Navy years, and his service as a State Senator and Governor of Georgia?

In his autobiography, Jimmy Carter tells us how he progressed from plowing his father’s fields with a mule to his service on one of the first US Navy nuclear submarines.

Jimmy carter also reflects on the civil rights and humanitarian efforts during his youth, during his service in the Navy, and during his terms as State Senator, then as Governor of Georgia.

NOTE: The YouTube video using this script will be released later as an obituary.

JIMMY CARTER REFLECTS ON HIS YOUTH

Jimmy Carter titled the first chapter of his biography: Archery and the Race Issue. The Carter family had deep roots in rural Plains Georgia, south of Atlanta. Jimmy Carter said that his grandfather Carter, in the late 1800’s, “when he was harvesting sugarcane, his machete was deflected into his thigh, inflicting a deep gash. Billy used his belt to stop the flow of blood, sent to the house for a needle and thread, sewed up the wound, and resumed work. He was shot and killed in a fight with a man named Will Taliaferro, in an altercation over a desk stolen from his cotton gin.”

Jimmy Carter tells us that his father, Earl Carter, “became a full-time farmer in 1928 when I was four years old. I was raised on a farm he bought about two and a half miles west of Plains in the rural community known as Archery,” an unincorporated town of about two hundred. They purchased a house built from plans purchased from a Sears & Roebuck catalog. Since the lumber was purchased locally, they likely chose to purchase the plans, tools, and supplies from Sears, which were shipped to them in a railroad boxcar.

Jimmy Carter’s life showed how many Americans transitioned from the early days of automobiles to a technologically advanced society of airplanes and nuclear power. When the Jack Dempsey fights were broadcast, they powered the radio from a cable run from their truck battery so all the neighbors could hear it. Jimmy Carter remembers: We had “no running water, electricity, or insulation, and the only heat sources besides the kitchen stove were some open fireplaces.” “We relieved ourselves in ‘slop jars’ during the night and emptied them in an outdoor toilet at daylight. It was the only privy on the farm; other families just used the bushes.”

Jimmy Carter continues, “We drew water from a well in the backyard until 1935 when Daddy had a windmill installed and ran a pipe from its tank into our kitchen and bathroom. He made a shower bath by punching holes in the bottom of a galvanized bucket hanging over a concrete floor, and the used water ran through a pipe onto the ground outside.” As part of FDR’s New Deal policies, electricity was provided to rural communities. Sometime after 1939, “Daddy prevailed upon the local cooperative to extend the electrical lines to our home.” The Carters had sold their farm, but the National Park Service bought it back and preserved it as it was in 1937.

His father Earl was a segregationist, as were nearly all whites in rural Georgia, but his mother, Lillian, was a nurse and had more progressive sentiments. There were only two white families in Archery. Many of the town’s blacks worked as field hands on their farm and were paid according to how much they harvested, or by the task performed. Living nearby were Jack and Rachel Clark, the blacks who helped run their farm. Rachel often picked more than most of the field hands harvesting the crops. Nearly all of Jimmy’s playmates were black children who lived nearby, they loved to hunt, fish, and explore.

His father Earl wanted to be as self-sufficient on his farm as possible, he became a “competent forester, farmer, herdsman, blacksmith, carpenter, and shoemaker.” The Carters also had a small general store next to their house, and if someone needed something outside of the store hours, they could knock on their door. They did not try to take advantage of the blacks who patronized their store, and when his father was on his deathbed, many of the black families called on them, grateful for their many kind deeds over the years.

Jimmy remembers that he “had to leave home for school sometimes before daybreak, but in the afternoon, I helped Jack milk eight cows. We always had plenty of sweet milk, buttermilk, cream, and butter in our house. Some of the excess milk was made into chocolate and vanilla drinks, put in eight-ounce bottles with waxed cardboard tops, and placed in iceboxes in grocery stores and filling stations within a five-mile circle around Plains. Daddy picked up the unsold drinks every Monday and we fed them to the hogs. Other milk was run through a separator on our back porch, and the pure cream was marketed through the Suwanee store in town.”

The Carters did not own a tractor, their more trusted field hands plowed the fields with mules. Jimmy Carter remembers, “There was a lot of skill and strength involved in the precise control of plow blades as they skimmed by the tender plants, loosening the soil for increased growth and, more important, controlling the weeds and grass that could choke out the crop and prevent it from bearing fruit.”

Jimmy Carter continues, “There was a proper way to train and control the draft animals so they could do their job and remain in good physical and mental condition. In the often-stifling heat, it was easy for them to become overworked, which could cause permanent loss of vigor or even a quick death. Mules usually had the good sense to refuse to walk as they approached this danger point of heat exhaustion, but horses had much less intelligence about self-protection.” Jimmy Carter was first allowed break land in the field with a plow when he was twelve, they started the task before daybreak when it was cool. He computed that he could plow the equivalent of over twenty miles of furrows in a day’s plowing.

Jimmy remembers, “We slaughtered about twenty hogs a few times each year on the coldest days, and Daddy made sausage and rubbed the hams, shoulders, and side meat with preservative spices, then cured the meat in the smokehouse behind our home before selling it in our store.” The Carters also sold wool sheared from their sheep, down from their geese, syrup from their sugarcane crop, and catsup from their tomatoes. In the early years, they had no tractors, they grew and sold corn, cotton, and peanuts as cash crops.[1]

THE RACE ISSUE IN ARCHERY AND PLAINS, GEORGIA

Jimmy Carter became aware of the race issue when he started attending a school separate from his black playmates. An excellent black school was owned by Bishop Johnson, which was near the St Mark African Methodist Episcopal Church in Archery. He was bishop of five Northern states, and Jimmy remembers once when he came home to Archery, he came to speak with his father Earl. Jimmy remembers, “It was not the custom for a black person to come to the front door of a white family’s home, and when Bishop Johnson wanted to speak with my father, he conformed to the mores of the time without acknowledging any difference of status. His chauffeur would” “bring the bishop to our front door. He would blow the horn, and my father would go outside to talk to his guest, either through the car window or with both of them standing under a large magnolia tree.”

His mother Lillian cared little for these distinctions. “The bishop’s son, Alvan, was a student of Harvard and Mama’s friend. When Alvan returned home on vacation he would come to our front door and knock, and my mother would welcome him for a conversation in our living room or on the front porch. If Daddy was home at the time, he would quietly leave the house and go to the barn or workshop until Alvan left.”

When the income from their farm improved, his mother Lillian worked as a private nurse in the homes of her patients, often for their black neighbors for six dollars for a twenty-four-hour day. When she was watching a patient, she would come home at 10 PM, shower and wash her uniform, leave notes assigning chores to her children, and return to her patient’s home at 2 AM. Jimmy remembers: “Her pay was spasmodic during those Great Depression days, usually in the form of chickens, eggs, pigs, or perhaps work around our house and yard by members of the family. It was a time of hardship and sharing, and she never let ability to pay be a factor in whom she served.”

Jimmy remembers, “Even when I was a child, my mother was known within our community for her refusal to accept any restraints on her treatment of black citizens as equals.” Though his father was more conservative, he “always treated his African American customers and employees with meticulous fairness and respect, but he believed completely that the two races should be segregated. Like all other men that I knew in and around Plains, he accepted this as a premise ordained by Bible scriptures and confirmed by a century of Jim Crow laws that were reversed a year after his death by the Supreme Court.”[2]

SCHOOL YEARS AND NAVY YEARS

Jimmy Carter had attended Plains High School, one of the best schools in the state, where 250 white students attended grades one through twelve. Jimmy remembers the school superintendent, Miss Julia Coleman: “She encouraged all of us to write themes, learn about classical music and art, read a long list of books, debate, and act in stage plays. Every day began with a half hour of chapel services, where we heard announcements, sang hymns, recited Holy Scripture, and listened to a brief religious homily.”

His parents insisted that Jimmy finish high school and attend college, but since money was scarce, that meant they sought to enlist him in the free military academies at West Point or Annapolis, but he was initially unsuccessful. He enrolled first at the junior college, then Georgia Tech, when he was unable to be considered for either military academy.[3] After joining the Naval Reserve Officer Training program at college, he received an appointment to the Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1943, during World War II, graduating in 1946. Jimmy was a good student in the top ten percent of his class, he read voraciously on history, literature, and all facets of the US Navy.

Rosalynn Smith was a few years younger than him and was a good friend of his younger sister Ruth. Jimmy was acquainted with her as she had come to the house often but had never talked to her until they had a movie date when he was home on leave from Annapolis. He was immediately smitten with her, but she would not marry until she graduated from junior college, as she had promised her father on his deathbed. Jimmy by then had also graduated, so they started housekeeping in Norfolk, Virginia, where his ship was stationed. Their first son Jack was born. [4]

JIMMY CARTER SELECTED TO SERVE AS A SUBMARINER

After two years, Jimmy Carter applied for a special career as a submariner, which required an intensive six-month training course. Jimmy remembers, “The instruction was highly practical, as we learned about the construction and diving principles of the submarines themselves; assembling, storing, and firing torpedoes; operating the different guns used when on the surface; caring for the many large electric batteries that propelled the ship when submerged; and special seamanship techniques in handling the fragile vessel, with its strong and watertight inner hull surrounded by thin tanks, easily damaged.”

In his devotions, Jimmy Carter reflected on the racial attitudes he experienced in his youth, Harry Truman’s executive order that halted segregation in the armed forces, and the terrifying training on how to escape from a disabled submarine a hundred feet down.

Jimmy Carter Daily Devotions: Presidential and Autobiographical Memories, and Humorous Stories
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/jimmy-carter-autobiographical-historical-and-humorous-reflections-from-his-daily-devotions/
https://youtu.be/C2LPpDU7udY

Most of the time the World War II era diesel submarines cruised on the surface, where their batteries could recharge. Several years after the war a snorkel was developed that allowed submarines to stay submerged near the surface while the batteries recharged, otherwise they could only submerge as long as the batteries had power. At best they could cruise a hundred miles a day, about as fast as the old sailing ships with a fair wind.

He learned how hazardous duty could be serving on these diesel submarines. Jimmy Carter remembers, “I was standing watch on the bridge about two hours after midnight, with my feet on the slatted wooden deck, when I saw an enormous wave dead ahead.” “The wave smothered our ship, several feet above my head. I was ripped loose, lifted up, and carried away from the ship. I could only swim around in the turbulent water, striving to reach the surface. This was my first experience with impending death, but when the wave receded, I found myself on the main deck directly aft of the bridge and was able to cling to our five-inch gun.” He scrambled back up the bridge and secured himself. If the ship had been tilted, he could have been swept off the boat and lost at sea in the dark tempest, and then he would have never been President.

The storm also damaged the radio antennas on the outside of their ship, they could receive but not transmit messages, so they sailed back to port, a three-day journey. The navy reported to the wives living in Hawaii that their ship was lost, but Rosalyn was in Georgia and didn’t get the message, fortunately.[5]

JIMMY CARTER SELECTED TO SERVE ON A NUCLEAR SUBMARINE

After commanding his own submarine for two years,[6] Jimmy Carter applied and was accepted to serve on one of the first two nuclear submarines. He details his uncomfortable interview with the irascible Captain Rickover, who even shortened the front legs of his chair so he would feel like he was falling forward during the interview! As in prior positions in the Navy, he enthusiastically learned as much as he could about nuclear propulsion, including taking studies in theoretical nuclear physics.

In the first nuclear submarine, the Nautilus, water was circulated through the nuclear reactor, this water-powered the turbines needed to generate electricity. The power plant of the second nuclear submarine that Jimmy Carter actually helped to design circulated liquid sodium through the reactor that heated water for the turbines. Handling liquid sodium was tricky, as it would be explosively reactive if it came into contact with water, but it was much more efficient, and since it was a liquid metal, it could be directed with electromagnets without moving parts, which meant that the reactor was much more compact.

There were not many who were knowledgeable about how to handle this new nuclear technology. He was asked to deal with a serious nuclear accident. Jimmy Carter remembers, “When a Canadian heavy water nuclear power plant at Chalk River was destroyed by accident in 1952, by a nuclear meltdown and subsequent hydrogen explosions, my crew was volunteered by Rickover to assist with the disassembly so it could be replaced.” “The reactor core was” “surrounded by intense radioactivity. Even with protective clothing, each of us would absorb the maximum permissible doses with just ninety seconds of exposure.”

Jimmy Carter describes how they faced this challenge. “An exact mock-up of the damaged reactor had been constructed on a nearby tennis court, modified constantly to represent at all times the exact status of the real core underground, including every pipe, fitting, bolt, and nut. Television cameras were focused on the core, so that when any changes were made, they were duplicated on the mock-up.” To practice, the team members would “don the heavy white suites and masks, dash onto the tennis court, and remove as many bolts and pipes as possible in ninety seconds.” After each practice run, then they would dash into the disabled reactor and perform these steps for real.

Jimmy Carter notes that the estimate of the amount of radiation that could be safely tolerated was a thousand times higher than it would be sixty years later when scientists were more knowledgeable about the risks. [7] Today, the reactor would likely have been simply sealed and monitored. This experience gave a future President valuable experience on the dangers of the nuclear age.

JIMMY CARTER RETIRES TO RUN THE FAMILY FARM

In April 1953 Jimmy Carter received a call that his father was seriously ill with pancreatic cancer and would not survive for long. He was granted emergency family leave to visit his father, Earl. He had become more active in the community, serving in the state legislature. There was a steady stream of visitors expressing gratitude for what he had done for their families, more than half were African American. He learned he had been much more active in the community than he realized, serving in the Lions Club and the Board of Education, and had spearheaded a drive to improve vocational education.

After his father’s death, Jimmy Carter decided to resign his commission and move back to Plains to run the family farm. The only person more upset than Captain Rickover with his decision was his wife Rosalyn, who was a very happy Navy wife who did not want to move back to rural Georgia.[8]

MANY TRANSITIONS IN RURAL PLAINS, GEORGIA

While Jimmy Carter was transitioning from a technologically demanding naval career to move back to rural Georgia, where farms had yet to transition from mules and horses to tractors, rural Georgia was also experiencing the same racial transitions that the military was dealing with. The year after his retirement, the Supreme Court issued the Brown decision, mandating that public schools be desegregated with all deliberate speed.

Jimmy Carter faced many financial challenges in making the farm profitable. He devoted as much acreage as possible to a new peanut variety, and with a normal rain was able to turn it around to become profitable again, also greatly expanding his warehouse and processing operations.

The schools were still segregated when he served on the Sumter County Board of Education. There were twenty-six small black schools because the county did not want to pay to bus black children, the blacks were sharing tattered textbooks, often sitting on tiny stools or chairs, with a limited curriculum. Absenteeism was rampant since the children were compelled to work in the fields.

Jimmy Carter remembers how segregation was resisted. “With the advent of the civil rights movement, the state legislature began to make an effort to show that the ‘separate but equal’ national policy was becoming somewhat more equal in order to preserve the separate. School buses were finally authorized for black students, but there was a legal requirement in Georgia that their front fenders be painted black so everyone would know that the passengers were not precious white children. In 1955, with the first stirrings of unrest, the Georgia Board of Educators fired all teachers who were members of the NAACP and directed that no teacher could serve who did not support racial segregation.”

Jimmy Carter personally faced resistance, the only gas station in town refused to sell him gasoline, so he was forced to install an underground tank and pumping station to store gasoline in bulk on his farm. Once a sign was pasted on his office door saying: COONS AND CARTERS GO TOGETHER. Although segregation occurred in Georgia without the violence in other states, Plains High School did not admit black students until 1967.[9]

JIMMY CARTER RUNS FOR GEORGIA STATE SENATE

Jimmy Carter decided to run for the Georgia State Senate when the US Supreme Court, in Baker v Carr, ruled that all votes be as equal as possible and that the rural areas could not have an undue advantage. His new Senate district included seven counties, he traveled to the county seats, visiting the newspaper offices and radio stations, and speaking for any civic club that accepted his request.

He had poll observers watching the counting in all counties. In Quitman, the small county, the local political boss, Joe Hurst, brazenly interfered in the election, requesting that all vote for his opponent, and openly discarding the ballots of those who voted with Carter. Jimmy Carter remembers, “Hurst did not seem disturbed that he was being observed, even when I demanded that he cease his illegal tampering with the election. He responded only that this was his county, he was chairman of the Quitman County Democratic Party, and this was the way elections were always conducted. As the candidate, I was free to talk to his friend the sheriff if I had a legal complaint to register.”

Jimmy Carter continues, “I was ahead by 75 votes when the returns were received from the other six counties, but in Quitman County, the vote was 360 to 136 for my opponent, although only 333 people had voted. Homer Moore was declared to be elected by the news media. The state Democratic Convention was meeting in Macon that same week, and I went there to register my complaint, which was ignored.”

Jimmy Carter then engaged the services of an attorney and called the editor of the Atlanta Journal, who ran a series of front-page articles on this election theft. In court, the judge threw out the ballots for Georgetown in Quitman County, since there was not a secret ballot or voting machines there, which meant that Jimmy Carter retained the lead, and was sworn into serving in the Georgia Senate. During his term, he championed election reform and succeeded in securing a four-year college in Southwest Georgia. He also discovered that his wife Rosalyn enjoyed politics and was an effective speaker.

Several Georgia officeholders defected to the Republican Party to oppose segregation, starting a trend that eventually resulted in the South going Republican. His mother was involved in the 1964 Presidential campaign supporting Lyndon Baines Johnson, or LBJ. Often her car was covered in graffiti with minor vandalism and Jimmy’s sons were roughed up in school.

Jimmy Carter remembers, “Racial attitudes were unclear in Plains, with most of our white citizens remaining silent. This changed when black activists began to enter churches with white congregations to demand participation in worship services.” The eleven deacons in his church “decided, over my objection, to establish a policy that black worshipers could not enter Plains Baptist Church.” When this policy was put up for a vote before the congregation, fifty voted for it, and only six voted against it. Jimmy continues, “That afternoon, many church members called to say that they agreed with me but didn’t want to aggravate other members of their families or alienate their customers.”[10]

JIMMY CARTER RUNS FOR GOVERNOR OF GEORGIA

Jimmy Carter was running for the US Congress when his Republican segregationist opponent withdrew unexpectedly to run for governor, just as the Democratic candidate also withdrew. Although he was assured of the Congressional seat with no opposition, Jimmy Carter made a quick decision to run for Governor of Georgia instead, assisted by Hamilton Jordan, who was then a student at the University of Georgia. He ran a good race but lost the primary to Lester Maddox, an arch-segregationist. Nobody won a clear majority in the general election, but the state legislature awarded the governorship to Lester Maddox.[11]

Jimmy Carter immediately began his 1970 campaign for the governorship, with Hamilton Jordan as campaign manager. Like in his future Presidential campaign, he was short of money, and Roslyn and his sons campaigned vigorously. Jimmy Carter remembers, “By Election Day we figured that Rosalyn and I had shaken hands personally with 600,000 Georgians. I received 48 percent of the Democratic votes on the first ballot and defeated Sanders in a two-man runoff.” In his Inauguration Address, he proclaimed “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.”

Jimmy Carter recounts that as Governor that “more than three hundred state agencies and departments were reduced to twenty-two, and twenty issuers of state bonds were reduced to one. Ever since that time, Georgia has enjoyed Triple-A bond ratings. He persuaded many foreign companies to invest in companies in Georgia. He was standing out from among the other state governors. Jimmy Carter participated in dozens of campaigns across the country, gaining four senators and giving the Democrats two-thirds control of the House in the wake of the Watergate scandal and Nixon’s resignation.[12]

Reflections on Morality, Philosophy, and History

Philosohy, History, and Morality in Judeo-Christian Tradition

Jimmy Carter’s Youth and Navy Years: From Plowing With Mules to Nuclear Submarines

Jimmy Carter’s life showed how many Americans transitioned from the early days of automobiles to a technologically advanced society of technology and nuclear power.

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