James Earl Carter, Jr. was born and raised in Plains Georgia by his father, James Senior and his mother, Bessie. James Senior was a farmer/public official and Bessie was a peace corps volunteer. He finished high school and then went on to Georgia Institute of Technology, but then in 1943 went to the Naval Academy. Carter was in the Navy from 1946-1953.
He left the navy in '53 because his dad died, so he was going to go home and run the farm. He ended up doing very well for himself and making quite a bit of money.
He got into politics by trying to be like his dad was. He became chairman of the county school board and something that bothered him was that some of the major politicians did not want black children in the public school system. They vowed to shut it down if there were black children that attended public school. Carter wasn't okay with that, and since it was the reappointment year for the Georgia Senate, he ran for election. When he got on, his only request was to be on the Education Committee, and that is really how Carter got into politics.
After serving on the Senate, he decided to run for governor because he didn't want to see a Republican be governor. The first time he ran, he lost, but tried again in 1970 and won. Some things that Carter fought for were civil rights, abortion, and the death penalty.
Civil rights were important to him as you could probably tell from his determination to let blacks into the public school system. Even though Carter did not personally support abortion, he shared his thoughts after the Roe v. Wade case in 1973 that even though he did not support it, he thought it should be legal. I disagree with that. I think he should have stuck with his personal beliefs, but I would speculate he probably did not display them publically because it wouldn't have been good for his political career.
The death penalty was overturned in George in the 1973 so Carter proposed 'Life in Prison' which before that, did not exist. He also thought the death penalty should be applied to people who have murdered, raped, or committed other serious offenses.
Jimmy Carter decided to run for the 1976 election. His opponent was current president Gerald Ford. The election was a close one, but Carter won. He was the first president from the deep south since James Buchanan. His winning the presidency was greatly due to the fact that Ford had pardoned Nixon for the Watergate Scandal, and a lot of Americans did not agree with that. During his presidency, he did things such as pardon draft dodgers, created the department of energy, helped Israel and Egypt sign a peace treaty, and helped our relations with China. Towards the end of his presidency, the US embassy in Iran was taken over and there were approximately 60 US hostages. Carter declared that we were not going to import anything from Iran and pretty much wouldn't associate with them until the hostages were released. He tried to rescue them, but these missions failed. Eventually, after he left office, those hostages were released. This hostage situation was a big reason Ronald Reagan beat him in the re-election.
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