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U.S. Presidents & Presidency: Carter

A topic guide covering the Presidents of the United States. This is an ongoing project. As such, additional individuals will be added over time.

Jimmy Carter

James "Jimmy" Carter served as the 39th president of the United States from 1977 - 1981. In 2002, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his contributions to peaceful solutions during conflict. 

Internet Resources

Reference, Archives, & Primary Sources

Jimmy Carter

Host Neil deGrasse Tyson features his interview with Jimmy Carter, the 39th president of the United States and founder of The Carter Center, whose objective is to wage peace and fight disease around the world. Comedian co-host Chuck Nice and parasitologist Mark Siddall join Tyson in the Hall of the Universe to discuss topics including the nature of parasites, how culture has played a role in the history of diseases, and the winning effort to eradicate the guinea worm. A National Geographic Production.

Source: Films on Demand

Jan. 20, 1977: Inaugural Ceremonies for Jimmy Carter

 

The Democrats reclaimed the White House in the 1976 election. The Governor from Georgia defeated Gerald Ford, who had become President on August 9, 1974, upon the resignation of President Nixon. The oath of office was taken on the Bible used in the first inauguration by George Washington; it was administered by Chief Justice Warren Burger on the East Front of the Capitol. The new President and his family surprised the spectators by walking from the Capitol to the White House after the ceremony.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifmaoLJTNrk

Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President

Part-rockumentary, part-presidential portrait, JIMMY CARTER: ROCK & ROLL PRESIDENT charts the role of rock music in Jimmy Carter's 1976 presidential campaign and beyond.

Source: Kanopy

Perspectives

Redeemer: The Life of Jimmy Carter

Evangelical Christianity and conservative politics are today seen as inseparable. But when Jimmy Carter, a Democrat and a born-again Christian, won the presidency in 1976, he owed his victory in part to American evangelicals, who responded to his open religiosity and his rejection of the moral bankruptcy of the Nixon Administration. Carter, running as a representative of the New South, articulated a progressive strand of American Christianity that championed liberal ideals, racial equality, and social justice--one that has almost been forgotten since. In Redeemer, acclaimed religious historian Randall Balmer reveals how the rise and fall of Jimmy Carter's political fortunes mirrored the transformation of American religious politics. From his beginnings as a humble peanut farmer to the galvanizing politician who rode a reenergized religious movement into the White House, Carter's life and career mark him as the last great figure in America's long and venerable history of progressive evangelicalism. Although he stumbled early in his career--courting segregationists during his second campaign for Georgia governor--Carter's run for president marked a return to the progressive principles of his faith and helped reenergize the evangelical movement. Responding to his message of racial justice, women's rights, and concern for the plight of the poor, evangelicals across the country helped propel Carter to office. Yet four years later, those very same voters abandoned him for Ronald Reagan and the Republican Party. Carter's defeat signaled the eclipse of progressive evangelicalism and the rise of the Religious Right, which popularized a dramatically different understanding of the faith, one rooted in nationalism, individualism, and free-market capitalism. An illuminating biography of our 39th president, Redeemer presents Jimmy Carter as the last great standard-bearer of an important strand of American Christianity, and provides an original and riveting account of the moments that transformed our political landscape in the 1970s and 1980s.

Palestine Peace Not Apartheid

In this book President Carter shares his intimate knowledge of the history of the Middle East and his personal experiences of the principal actors, and he addresses sensitive political issues many British and American officials shy from. This is a challenging and provocative book.

The Unfinished Presidency

It is not a stretch to argue that history will remember Jimmy Carter for his post-presidential works long after his tenure in the White House has been forgotten. But as Douglas Brinkley points out in this absorbing study, it took such presidential accomplishments as human rights advocacy, the Camp David Accords, and the Panama Canal Treaties to give Carter the international moral credibility to refashion himself as the global peacemaker. Although his is an unauthorized biography, Brinkley has had unique and intimate access to the former President -traveling with him to meet Simon Peres in Israel and Jean-Bertrand Arisitide in Haiti, spending hours interviewing him at home in Georgia, and being allowed exclusive access to the post-presidential papers, including Carter's correspondence with fellow world leaders Mikhail Gorbachev, Deng Xiaoping, Margaret Thatcher, and Oscar Arias. Drawing on this wealth of information, Brinkley's book fully captures the ubiquitous Carter's prickly personality and remarkable political life since 1980, including the complex relationships he has developed with such international pariahs as Fidel Castro, D

Living Faith

For almost three decades, President Carter has regularly spent part of each Sunday reading from scripture and sharing his personal faith with neighbors, friends, and visitors at his Baptist church in Plains, Georgia. In Living Faith, he draws on this experience, exploring the values closest to his heart and the personal beliefs that have nurtured and sustained him. For President Carter, faith finds its deepest expression in a life of compassion, reconciliation, and service to others. Living Faith is filled with stories of people whose lives have touched his--some from the world stage, more from modest walks of life. We see how President Carter learned about other faiths from Prime Minister Menachim Begin and President Anwar Sadat; learned a lesson in forgiveness from a clash with commentator George Will; how he was inspired by the simple theology of preacher Ely Cruz, "Love God and the person in front of you"; and how the cheerful strength of family friend Annie Mae Rhodes taught him the meaning of "patient faith." Rooted in scripture and infused with a vision of how a dynamic faith can enrich our public and private lives, this is the most personal book yet by one of our most admired Americans--a warmly inspirational volume to give and to share.

Faith

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER In this powerful reflection, President Jimmy Carter contemplates how faith has sustained him in happiness and disappointment. He considers how we may find it in our own lives. All his life, President Jimmy Carter has been a courageous exemplar of faith. Now he shares the lessons he learned. He writes, "The issue of faith arises in almost every area of human existence, so it is important to understand its multiple meanings. 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. The religious aspects of faith are also covered, since this is how the word is most often used, and I have included a description of the ways my faith has guided and sustained me, as well as how it has challenged and driven me to seek a closer and better relationship with people and with God." As President Carter examines faith's many meanings, he describes how to accept it, live it, how to doubt and find faith again. A serious and moving reflection from one of America's most admired and respected citizens.

An Outsider in the White House

Jimmy Carter entered the White House with a desire for a collegial staff that would aid his foreign-policy decision making. He wound up with a "team of rivals" who contended for influence and who fought over his every move regarding relations with the USSR, the Peoples' Republic of China, arms control, and other crucial foreign-policy issues. In two areas--the Camp David Accords and the return of the Canal to Panama--Carter's successes were attributable to his particular political skills and the assistance of Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and other professional diplomats. The ultimate victor in the other battles was Carter's national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, a motivated tactician. Carter, the outsider who had sought to change the political culture of the executive office, found himself dependent on the very insiders of the political and diplomatic establishment against whom he had campaigned Based on recently declassified documents in the Carter Library, materials not previously noted in the Vance papers, and a wide variety of interviews, Betty Glad's An Outsider in the White House is a rich and nuanced depiction of the relationship between policy and character. It is also a poignant history of damaged ideals. Carter's absolute commitment to human rights foundered on what were seen as national security interests. New data from the archives reveal how Carter's government sought the aid of Pope John Paul II to undercut the human-rights efforts of the El Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero. A moralistic approach toward the Soviet Union undermined Carter's early desire to reduce East-West conflicts and cut nuclear arms. As a result, by 1980 the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) was in limbo, and a nuclear counterforce doctrine had been adopted. Near the end of Carter's single term in office Vance stepped down as secretary of state, in part because Brzezinski's "muscular diplomacy" had come to dominate Carter's foreign policy. When Vance's successor, Edmund Muskie, took over, the State Department was reduced to implementing policies made by Brzezinski and his allies. For Carter, the rivalry for influence in the White House was concluded and the results, as Glad shows, were a mixed record and an uncertain presidential legacy.

An Hour Before Daylight

A presidential memoir of lasting importance, Carter's account of his rural Depression boyhood is a portrait of pre-Civil Rights Georgia that dramatizes unforgettably how the country has changed. It is, in many ways, a stunning and honest biography of the American South, written by one of its most talented sons.

Carter and the Reagan Revolution

Jimmy Carter won the 1976 presidential race but was presented with an ugly combination of economic stagnation and inflation (stagflation), the Iranian revolution, and the Tehran hostage crisis. Ronald Reagan escalated the Cold War by planning space-based weapons, and aimed to diminish the reach of the federal government. His masterful use of the media made him a popular president.

Source: Kanopy

Jimmy Carter - U.S. President | Mini Bio

Born on October 1, 1924, in Plains, Georgia, Jimmy Carter was the 39th president of the United States (1977-81) and served as the nation's chief executive during a time of serious problems at home and abroad. Carter's perceived mishandling of these issues led to defeat in his bid for reelection. He later turned to diplomacy and advocacy, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2002. 

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVlU7F5Gwo8

Excerpt from Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter's Nobel Peace Prize Lecture

 

On Dec.10, 2002, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2002 to Carter "for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development."

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIMtxRCQa6A