Freeman: Remembering “Mr. Jimmy”

This is a little autobiographical. For three years, from age nine to 12, I lived in Americus, Georgia, just off the highway to Plains. The Carter family was famous in that area of southwest Georgia primarily because Mr. Jimmy, as he preferred to be called, was an early advocate of civil rights for African Americans. Because of that, he was loved by the relatively small group of anti-racist civil rights advocates and African Americans, but hated by the Ku Klux Klan.

Almost none of the testimonials to President Carter mention his strong advocacy of civil rights prior to his political career. They were important, and he deserves recognition for his courage in the face of threats by the Klan.

Mr. Jimmy was a very humble man, even as he attained great power as President. He was a devout Christian and lived by the teachings of Jesus Christ who, quite literally, was his north star. His great humanitarianism was grounded in his faith.

As a young child, I worked in the fields with African Americans during summers, peanut farmer Carter was far more influential in my life than I realized at the time. Thanks to him, and to my parents who were segregationists but not actually racists, I grew up seeing African Americans as human beings worthy of social, economic and political equality.

Those were complicated times, as evidenced by my parents’ views on “race”. My father used to say to me “Son, the black man never has been given a fair chance”. And you might ask, then, why was he a segregationist. Good question.

His father, my paternal grandfather, was a member of the Ku Klux Klan. As a boy, my father saw his father tie a young black man, more correctly, a young African American, to a fence and whip him with a bull whip until his back was covered in blood. That resonated with my father in multiple ways. He was a segregationist because he believed African Americans and “whites” never would be able to live together in peace. Consequently, while he supported equality for African Americans, he believed their accommodations should be segregated for their own protection.  

Sadly, today we see a resurgence of racism that I’m sure troubled President Carter in his last days. To see us having come so far and begin slipping back into the racist society of President Carter’s youth must have been terribly painful.

As President, Carter accomplished a lot; not just in terms of civil rights; but in bringing about a more peaceful world. Those writing of his life today almost always mention how, but as President and afterwards, Mr. Jimmy worked tirelessly for peace at home and peace in the world. To say he was a strong humanitarian throughout his life would be an understatement even if he did “fail” as President with respect to some, but certainly not all, of his foreign policies.

Certainly, he deserves great credit for brokering a peace agreement between Israel and Egypt. That agreement continues to hold today despite Zionist Netanyahu’s pursuit of reestablishing the Biblical borders of Israel by waging a war of genocide against the peoples of Palestine—Muslim, Christian AND Jew.

Sadly, President Carter’s greatest failure as President, and probably in his life, was the Iranian Revolution. Rather than side with the revolutionaries, for some reason I never will understand, he sided with the corrupt and brutal self-anointed “Shah” of Iran. When he was deposed by the Iranian people, Carter sent in the CIA to orchestrate a counter revolution to reinstate the Shah.

Revolutionaries seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, holding everyone in the Embassy hostage until a few minutes after Carter relinquished the Presidency to Ronald Reagan. We cannot know what would have happened had President Carter accepted the Iranian revolution. Perhaps, today, Iran would be at least somewhat democratic and allied with the U.S. instead of Russia. Sadly, we never will know.

Mr. Jimmy’s domestic policies were much better and much more successful than his foreign policies. And today, we still benefit from much of what Mr. Jimmy accomplished as President.

President Carter, ironically, was not a “politician” in the usual concept of the word. He did not engage in “wheeling and dealing”, and his relationship with the Democratic controlled Congress was rocky. Still, he and Congress were able to accomplish a lot. We still benefit from some of those accomplishments today.

Carter was a fiscal conservative. Although he had budget deficits, as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Federal spending decreased four percent, not an insignificant accomplishment, especially given his $19 billion tax cut.

His biggest domestic challenge probably was the recurring “energy crisis” of 1973-1979. He had difficulty getting his energy proposals through Congress but did succeed in laws encouraging production of more fuel efficient automobiles, conservation, initiating development of renewable energy, and creation of the Department of Energy.

When Carter took office, the U.S. was experiencing “stagflation”, a relatively stagnant economy and high inflation. Inflation continued to be problematic throughout his term. But he managed significant accomplishments resulting in an economic growth rate of about five percent and an increase in “real” (adjusted for inflation) median household income also of about five percent. Unfortunately, much of these accomplishments were diminished by the 1979 “energy crisis.”

President Carter’s domestic program would have been much more successful if he could have established a positive working relationship with Congress. Unfortunately, many of his domestic policy proposals were rejected by Congress or gained only partial approval. These included proposals on national health care, expanding Medicaid and Medicare benefits, and requirements for employers to provide catastrophic health care insurance for employees. The latter proposal ultimately was passed by Congress.

Overall, Carter probably was a more successful President than he generally has been given credit for. There are many reasons for this. Some were a consequence of the times; the post Viet Nam War public disillusion with government, inflation, and at times weak economic growth. Others were a consequence of Carter’s own personality and his unwillingness to play Washington’s political game.

What Mr. Jimmy will be and should be most remembered for are his religious belief we should conduct our lives in accordance with the teachings of Jesus Christ and his great humanitarianism which flowed from those religious beliefs.

Editor’s Note: The above guest column was penned by Samuel Freeman, a writer and researcher, Vietnam Veteran, and former university professor based in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. The column appears in the Rio Grande Guardian with the permission of the author. Freeman can be reached by email via: srfree1542@icloud.com

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