In January, in our nation’s capital, there was a state funeral for Jimmy Carter, the 39th president, and Donald Trump was inaugurated as the 47th president of the United States.
Trump is very well known. Carter not so much. This raises the question:
Who was Jimmy Carter?
There was a flood of commentary answering this question after Carter died on December 29, 2024, through his state funeral and burial on January 9. Among other things, he was remembered as an underrated President, a peanut farmer from Plains, Georgia, and a Sunday school teacher.
We remember him as a role model who demonstrated what it means to be a good citizen. In this new year of 2025, after the chaotic and polarized presidential election year of 2024, and with the nature of the new administration in office, learning from who Jimmy Carter was and what he did is more important now than ever.
As the following discussion illustrates, Carter excelled in five civic engagement areas — Individual, Political, Organizational, Community, Social — that are central to good citizenship.
Individual Engagement: Jimmy Carter was a striver. He strove not only to advance himself individually but to advance others as well. This sense of responsibility can be attributed to his early development.
Carter’s mother Lillian was a nurse who joined the Peace Corps at the age of 68, and served in India for two years. Lillian Carter was a nurturing but independent person who played the pivotal role in empowering Carter for the future. Carter was also shaped by Rachel Clark, a black woman who frequently cared for Carter in her home when Lillian was at work.
This powerful tandem, in collaboration with Carter’s father and others, helped prepare him to leave Plains and embark on his journey as an adult. That journey began with Carter going to the U.S. Naval Academy, from which he graduated in the top 10% of his class in 1947. Carter went from the Naval Academy to submarine duty, eventually serving in the nuclear submarine program during its early years.
After his father died in 1953, Carter left the Navy to return home to Plains to assume responsibility for the family peanut farm. The initial years were difficult for financial and agricultural reasons, but Carter, along with his wife Rosalynn, did his homework, persevered, and built a very successful business. After that he was ready to go on to the next stop on his journey — the political arena.
Political Engagement: Jimmy Carter was an outsider. He didn’t come from an extremely well-connected political or personally influential background, but he climbed the political ladder rapidly.
His first rung on that ladder was being elected to be a Georgia state senator in 1962. He served two terms as a senator, from 1963–1967. In 1966, he ran in the primary to be the Democratic candidate for governor of Georgia but lost. He took the lessons that he learned from that defeat, and in 1970 won the Democratic nomination — and the governorship of Georgia — to reach the second rung on the ladder. He served as Governor from 1971–1975.
While Governor, he considered running for President of the United States to reach the third rung on the ladder. He announced his candidacy in December 1974, and at first was dismissed as not a viable candidate.
Carter, in his usual hard working and research-oriented manner, proved that dismissal was premature. He prevailed against a crowded field in the Democratic primaries. Carter went on from there to defeat Gerald Ford in the general election, carrying all of the southern states and winning 297 electoral votes to Ford’s 241.
Carter had many major accomplishments while he was president, such as establishing the Departments of Education and Energy, negotiating the Camp David peace accord between Egypt and Israel, and creating millions of new jobs through the Economic Stimulus Appropriations Act. In spite of this, his presidency was marred significantly by two overriding factors.
As the nonprofit White House Historical Association states, “Unfortunately, the inflation and interest rates were at near record highs, and efforts to reduce them caused a short recession.” And “the seizure as hostages of the U.S. embassy staff in Iran dominated the news during the last 14 months of the administration.”
The Association observes that these factors “…contributed to Carter’s defeat in 1980.” The other factor contributing to that defeat was the charismatic appeal of his Republican opponent, Ronald Reagan. Reagan walloped Carter, winning 44 states — including all of the southern states except for Georgia — and securing 494 electoral votes to Carter’s 49.
Organizational Engagement: Jimmy Carter was a man of faith. As noted, after he returned to Plains, he taught Sunday School to children and became an active member of his Baptist church.
His faith was not restricted to organized religion, however. It was transcendent. Carter points this out in his book Faith: A Journey for All, in which he writes:
The issue of faith arises in almost every area of human existence, so it is important to understand its multiple meanings. For many of us, a question that needs to be answered is “Am I a person of faith?” The answer is almost always affirmative. In this book, my primary goal is to explore the broader meaning of faith, its far-reaching effect on our lives, and its relationship to past, present, and future events in America and around the world.
Carter’s transcendent faith included a strong belief in himself, which was instilled in him, in large part, by his “absolute faith” in his mother and father. He was devastated by his resounding defeat by Reagan, which ended Carter’s journey as an elected official. He reacted to that setback not by giving up, but by picking himself up and drawing upon his faith of various types, including religious, to find new pathways to travel, and to build for his civic engagement and that of others.
Community Engagement: Jimmy Carter was a community builder. He helped build those communities in his hometown of Plains, the state of Georgia, the United States of America, and around the world.
When he returned to Plains after living in the White House, he didn’t build a mansion. He went back instead to live at 209 Woodland Drive, in the one-story ranch-style home that he and Rosalynn built, and then occupied from 1961 until today.
The Carters didn’t change upon coming home to Plains. They returned to be part of the community they loved.
What did change somewhat upon Carters’ return was the community of Plains.
The Jimmy Carter National Historic Park, maintained by the National Park Service, was established to preserve the remnants of the rural south, such as the family farm on which he grew up and the school he attended.
Upon their return to Georgia, the Carters also founded The Carter Center in partnership with Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia in 1982. The Center has a strong presence in the Atlanta community, with approximately 230 employees, and builds strong communities in the U.S. and around the world, with more than 3,100 employees world-wide.
It has “…a fundamental commitment to human rights and the alleviation of human suffering. The Center seeks to prevent and resolve conflict, enhance freedom and democracy, and improve health.” Since established, it has helped maintain peace and health in more than 80 countries.
The Center has had impact on communities worldwide. In 2002, Carter received the Nobel Peace Prize for his work through the Carter Center, and his negotiation during his presidency of the Camp David accord, bringing peace between Egypt and Israel.
Social Engagement: Jimmy Carter was a champion of human and civil rights. He advocated for social justice and equal opportunity throughout his life. At his inauguration as Governor of Georgia in 1971, Carter stunned the audience by declaring that “the time of racial discrimination is over.” Perhaps even more stunning was that he had a picture of Martin Luther King, Jr. and other prominent Black Georgians posted in the State Capitol Building.
Those were not just mere words or minor actions. Throughout his governorship and presidency, Carter had an outstanding record in advancing civil rights and race relations. Among other things, he promoted voting rights, appointed Blacks to prominent positions in Georgia and the federal government, sponsored a black colleges initiative, advanced legislation providing business opportunities for Blacks, and spoke out frequently on the need for affirmative action.
As president, Carter elevated human rights in addition to civil rights. During his Inaugural Address in 1977, he stated “Because we are free, we can never be indifferent to the fate of freedom elsewhere.” He followed up on this by having the State Department do an annual study presenting Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.
The most widely known area of Carter’s investment in, and concern for, human rights came after his presidency. That was his involvement with Habitat for Humanity.
He began this work in 1984, helping build a home in September of that year. Since then, what became known as the annual Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Work Project has built, renovated, or repaired 4,400 homes in 14 countries.
Those homes provide safe and affordable housing, so that their adult occupants and their families can work to advance themselves and make progress toward achieving their personal dreams.
Jimmy Carter led by example in his civic engagement, and encouraged other citizens to do the same. He also spoke out on issues of importance to this country and the world.
His most famous remarks in this regard were delivered from the Oval Office on July 15, 1979, at the height of the nation’s energy crisis, and with inflation spiraling out of control. In his “Crisis of Confidence” speech — later labeled his “malaise” speech — Carter proclaimed:
I need to talk to you tonight about a fundamental threat to American democracy…
The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will…
Confidence has defined our course and served as a link between generations. We’ve always believed in something called progress. We’ve always had a faith that the days of our children would be better than our own.
Our people are losing that faith, not only in government itself but in the ability of citizens to serve as the ultimate rulers and shapers of the democracy.
We used those words from that speech by Carter to open our book, Working the Pivot Points: To Make American Work Again, published in 2012, and observed, “President Carter’s comments could have been used to describe the American condition in 2012.”
Fast forward one more decade, and because of the societal polarization and division, which has escalated since the Trump presidency, those comments are even more pertinent now than they were then.
David French addressed the relevance of Carter’s 1979 speech today in detail in his column for the New York Times, written in February of 2023. In his concluding paragraph, French states:
At the start of this piece, I used “pastoral” to describe Carter’s speech. But there’s another word: prophetic. His words were not the clarion call necessary for his time, but they are the words for this time.
Throughout his life, Jimmy Carter spoke words that are appropriate for this time on many issues. He always spoke truth from power, and even though he was not a pastor, he used his public pulpit to preach on numerous important topics.
In his later life, much of that “preaching” was done through the numerous books that he authored. Those books include: The Virtues of Aging (1998), in which he reflects on his own life, along with Rosalynn’s, and provides advice on what senior citizens can do in the latter years to feel personally satisfied and productive; Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis (2006), in which he stressed the critical need for the separation of church and state and politics from religion; Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid (2006) — a controversial book in which shared his perspective on what needed to be done to bring peace to the relations between Palestine and Israel and eliminate the fear of terrorism.
Those writings, along with his personal involvement, reveal that Carter was a thinker, a feeler, and a serious person. But they do not tell his whole story.
Carter also had a good sense of humor, and loved rock and roll and all types of music.
On the humorous side, a story Carter told frequently is about a trip when he was president to Japan where he decided to start his speech with a short joke. The joke evoked lots of laughter from the Japanese audience.
After his presentation, he asked the interpreter how he interpreted the joke, so Carter could get as big a laugh when he told it again. The interpreter hemmed and hawed, and then confessed to Carter that he told the audience President Carter had told a very funny story, and to please give him a big laugh.
On the music side, Carter didn’t need an interpreter. He knew what he liked. The CNN documentary Jimmy Carter: Rock and Roll President revealed that his fondness for music ranged from rock and roll, to folk, to soul and jazz. His favorite musicians and songs included: Willie Nelson, “Whiskey River;” Bob Dylan, “Maggie’s Farm;” Mahalia Jackson, “Down by the Riverside;” Dizzy Gillespie, “Salt Peanuts;” and the Allman Brothers Band, “Midnight Rider.”
Those sides of Jimmy Carter show that his story is a rich and robust one. His story has been told more completely by others who have written books about him, such as: Jonathan Alter’s His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, A Life (2020), which covers Carter’s entire life; Kai Bird’s The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter (2021), which re-examines the nature and achievements of the Carter presidency; Stuart Eizenstat’s President Carter: The White House Years (2018), which provides an insider’s view of the work of Carter and his staff.
And, for the younger generation (Grades 3 -7) there is David Stabler’s Who is Jimmy Carter (2022), written as part of the Who HQ book series on famous people. Stabler’s book covers Carter’s entire life, and ends with this paragraph:
Today, Carter is remembered as much for his work outside the White House as for his time in it. “I can’t deny I’m a better ex-president than I was a president” he once said.” … “I have one life and one chance to make it count for something” he told the New York Times. “My faith demands that I do whatever I can, wherever I am, whenever I can, for as long as I can with whatever I have to try to make a difference.”
That is Jimmy Carter speaking on who Jimmy Carter was. No one could have said it better.
When Jimmy Carter was running to become the Democratic nominee for President in 1975 as a relative unknown, several of his opponents asked mockingly, “Who’s Jimmy?”
One half a century later, In 2025, hundreds of millions of people in the United States and around the world now know a little bit about who Jimmy Carter was.
He was a good citizen who made a difference, so that we as good citizens can do so as well.