Viewpoints on the life and works of President Jimmy Carter have moderated through the perspective of time to become clearer and more complete in recognizing how consequential his presidency was. Add to that his four decades post-presidency, which are regarded as one of the most successful and admirable second careers any president -- indeed anyone – has had. That includes his mother, the irrepressible Lillian Gordy Carter, “Miss Lillian.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Men are what their mothers made them.” The lives of Miss Lillian and her firstborn were active, rich, and regularly fraught with controversy. Miss Lillian was socially liberal in the segregated South, interacting with Black neighbors and inviting them into her home – through the front door. Young Jimmy had to meet his Black friends at his fence gate, explaining simply that that was how things were, and everyone understood.
Miss Lillian extended that experience to her work in Georgia and in India, where she was forbidden to provide health care to the poor who were not a part of the organization she was brought in to serve. She later made an agreement to purchase provisions herself and provide them to the poor.
Credit: contributed
Credit: contributed
These experiences shaped and strengthened President Carter’s personality, beliefs and resolve to have a presidency that was unyieldingly and unceremoniously for the people.
I met Miss Lillian when I made my way from India to enroll at Auburn University. My voyage to Auburn was eye-opening. In my first experience with segregation, I stood in front of a bathroom sign at the Greyhound Bus Station in Atlanta that directed “Whites” one way and “Coloreds” another way. Seeing my dilemma, a kindly gentleman directed me, a brown boy, toward “Whites.”
Our bus from Atlanta arrived in Auburn at 2 a.m. on a cold January night. There were no taxis at that hour, and I prodded the agreeable bus driver to drop me off at Auburn Hall as the remaining passengers were fast asleep. I was met by a woman in her robe and hair rollers. Miss Lillian was filling in for our regular house mother and she invited this skinny, Indian immigrant into the dorm that winter night.
About six months later, out of the clear blue sky, I received a phone call. It was Miss Lillian, who remembered that pathetic, freezing new arrival and invited me to visit the Carter home in Plains where I met her son, Jimmy. President and Rosalynn Carter’s lives and mine have remained intertwined to this day.
Carter’s presidency has been portrayed as less than a success, to say the least. It is quickly remembered, not only for Carter’s deep, Christian faith and Southern drawl, but also for the energy crisis resulting from the OPEC oil embargo; “stagflation” and the Iranian hostage crisis, the latter of which likely cost him a second term.
Despite his efforts to mediate global conflict, the great irony of President Carter’s political career was his status as an “outsider” that impaired his ability to build relationships at home with his own party in Congress and with change-resistant voters who could not share his vision for the virtue of a simpler, less profligate way of living, the lifestyle he and Rosalynn embraced then as now.
That’s ironic because his legacy now is his stature as a respected global icon known for mediating disputes between enemies and all manner of adversaries, including disease.
His proposed changes in energy policy would have accelerated advances in technologies and climate-friendly alternatives to oil import dependency but were rejected then, as now, by industry and individuals. This has cost the planet in potentially catastrophic environmental terms. Over 40 years ago, President Carter created the U.S. Department of Energy to support his objectives. We now recognize his prescience.
From his mother, President Carter learned about patience and tolerance, a principle established by Mahatma Gandhi, termed “satyagraha” to describe patience and righteousness in dealing nonviolently with adversaries, much as Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. practiced.
Jimmy Carter ran on the promise to return integrity to the presidency. In his early campaigning, he took a phone call from a potential donor who offered a much-needed seven-figure contribution to his campaign. He asked me to check it out. I learned the donor was not the type of supporter Jimmy Carter would benefit from in the long term and recommended he decline the generous offer. He did.
In an era that seems to be dominated by violence and an inability to solve problems by talking out our differences even within our political system, it is instructive to remember the complete history of Jimmy Carter’s administration. During his presidency, the United States was involved in zero wars, following his studied admonition to approach foreign involvement with circumspection. He is a student of history, facts and outcomes, not knee-jerk temper.
We now can set aside our frustration with him and remember the joyous result of his patient agonizing and prolonged negotiations to secure the safe release of American hostages in Tehran. Stories describe the sabotaging of his efforts and explain why the hostages were released on the final day of his presidency.
The crowning achievement, among many, of President Carter’s administration was the Camp David Accords, a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. To this day, they remain mutual trade partners. The importance of this treaty to President Carter had as much to do with making peace in the ancient Holy Land of his faith, as it did geopolitically.
Jimmy Carter, a nuclear engineer, was Time magazine’s Man of the Year for 1976. Mohandas Gandhi, a lawyer and an Indian political ethicist who, like Carter, lived simply and advocated for nonviolence and human rights, took the title in 1930.
What did Carter and Gandhi have in common besides the Time honor? Each was a highly educated and contradictory character, deeply spiritual and grounded in the principle of nonviolent social change. Each was deeply influenced by a mother who instilled principles of selflessness and service. Each lived simply and frugally.
In these days of near-glorification of violence, it would be instructive to reread history, revisit principles of peaceful conflict resolution exemplified by President Carter and Gandhi and listen to our mothers.
R.K. Sehgal is a longtime Atlanta business executive and a former Georgia Commissioner of Industry, Trade and Tourism.
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