by Jimmy Carter
Soon after I left the White House I met Miller Williams and some other poets from Arkansas, and they encouraged me to prepare some of my poems for publication. I did this over a period of several years, and Always a Reckoning was published in 1995. My poetry advisers were tough critics of my submitted lines, but our agreement precluded their making specific suggestions of a word or phrase. Both the publisher and I have been surprised at the book’s success.
My daughter, Amy, was enrolled in the Memphis College of Art in 1994, and one of her assignments was to illustrate a story for children. As a submarine officer with small boys at home, I had developed adventures of an imaginary sea monster called Little Baby Snoogle-Fleejer, which I recounted to them after returning from cruises at sea. I wrote one of the stories as a text, and Amy painted thirteen scenes in the book.
I was teaching Bible lessons every Sunday in my local church and decided to describe my religious beliefs and experiences in two books, Living Faith and Sources of Strength, which were published in 1996 and 1997.
By 1998 I was approaching my seventy-fifth birthday, and, considering how enjoyable and gratifying my experiences had been since my “retirement” from politics, I decided to write a book entitled The Virtues of Aging. Some jokesters commented that it would be the shortest book ever written. Describing how much unprecedented freedom we have to undertake new projects after we no longer have to meet a regular work schedule, the book has been quite popular.
I completed another book in 2001 that concentrated on how we celebrated Christmas over the years of my life, after having groups of black and white older people come to our home to share their own memories in Christmas in Plains.
I decided to write a book just about my boyhood on a farm, with almost all our neighbors being African-American, and was delighted when it was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in 2002. An Hour Before Daylight has aroused more written and verbal comments than any of my other books, primarily from people who had the same kind of early life as children of farmers, whether in America or in other countries.
I received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 and shared my acceptance speech with Simon & Schuster in advance, so they were able to publish the small book at the same time as the award. Because of the subject and the relatively low price, this book has sold more copies than any others I have written.
I had always been concerned about the lack of history texts or historical novels that presented a balanced and accurate account of major military actions during the Revolutionary War. Knowing of my own ancestors’ histories, I did extensive research for seven years, using personal accounts of participants in the American and British military forces. This was in pre-Google years, and I sometimes had dozens of library books on my shelf at a time. Readers of The Hornet’s Nest from around the world have let me know how they have been surprised and pleased at this view from the Southland, where almost all the major battles were fought.
Many people asked if Rosalynn and I worked all the time or if we ever had time for fun and relaxation, so I wrote Sharing Good Times in 2004. I described the many things we have taken up together for the first time at a relatively advanced age, including downhill skiing, mountain climbing, bird watching, and fly-fishing in many countries.
I was especially concerned about some of the policies of our government and wanted an opportunity to discuss them publicly, so I wrote Our Endangered Values in 2005 to express my views on unnecessary wars, derogation of women and girls, excessive incarceration and the death penalty, unwarranted intrusion on citizens’ privacy, the rise of fundamentalism in government, and the intrusion of religion and excessive money into politics. It was critical of some federal government policies and disturbing violations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva principles concerning warfare, and other international standards that we claim to honor.
Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, published in 2006, has been my most controversial book, not because of its content but because of its title. The next year I finished writing a book about the work we had done at The Carter Center entitled Beyond the White House. In 2008, I wrote a book about my mother, who was a registered nurse, a dedicated political activist, and a Peace Corps volunteer in India at the age of seventy. She never observed the principle of white supremacy when I was growing up in the Deep South, which helped shape my commitment to the protection of human rights.
We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land, which proposed a specific plan for peace between Israel and its neighbors, was published in 2009.
I compiled a fairly complete volume of highly personal comments from the day-to-day diary I kept while serving as president. Entitled White House Diary, and published in 2010, it included many observations that had been too sensitive or personal to include in Keeping Faith several decades earlier.
By 2011 I had taught more than six hundred Bible lessons, which had been recorded in audio and video form and stored in a refrigerated space in my presidential library. I selected 366 of them, and an editor from Zondervan summarized each of the recordings. I edited them down to page-length versions for Through the Year with Jimmy Carter with a religious statement for each day. I also provided about two hundred comments to be included throughout a New International Version of the scriptures entitled NIV Lessons from Life Bible: Personal Reflections with Jimmy Carter, published in 2012.
My most recent book, A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power (2014), is, I think, the most important. We have held two Human Rights Defenders Forums on the subject at The Carter Center, and a third will take place before this book is released. In my book I described in some detail the horrendous abuse of women and girls that is occurring in almost every nation and made twenty-three recommendations of action that can be taken to alleviate this abuse.
Writing and promoting the sale of these books has given me an opportunity to study a wide range of subjects in great detail, to analyze what I have learned, and to present my views to the general public in America and many foreign countries. This has also provided my best opportunities for interviews with the media, and to answer questions from students and others who hear my presentations. As I write this, in November 2014, I have made recent speeches to overflow crowds at the Kennedy Presidential Library, in San Diego to ten thousand members of the American Academy of Religion, to a larger assembly sponsored by the Islamic Society of North America in Denver, and to students and faculty at Harvard Divinity School, Yale, and Princeton. All the universities are dealing with alleged excessive sexual assaults on campus, with relative impunity to the rapists. I have summarized A Call to Action, answered questions from the audience, and then signed copies of the book.
Most of my family’s income since leaving the White House has come from the books I have written. Although my time in Plains is limited because of active involvement in the affairs of The Carter Center, Emory University, and Habitat for Humanity, I try to take full advantage of my days at home. I visit our farms regularly, consult with our forester and the farmers who grow the row crops, and take care of routine matters around our house. I teach Bible lessons every Sunday I am at home, and Rosalynn and I are active in the affairs of the local community. On a relatively free day, I get up quite early in the morning and spend as many hours as possible writing on the computer. When I get tired of composing paragraphs and looking at the screen, I walk a few steps out to my workshop to design and build furniture or to paint pictures.
Woodworking and Painting
I found a nice wood shop at Camp David, which I used a lot on the weekends, mostly to make small items as presents for friends and members of my family. Many people knew about this interest, and my going-away present from the White House staff and cabinet members was an order to Sears, Roebuck for all the power tools needed to build furniture. Since we no longer owned an automobile, I installed the equipment in our former garage, and during the past thirty-five years I have updated the lathes, jointers, drill presses, planers, and various saws as needed. I also have a compl
ete set of hand tools, and have enjoyed shopping for them in foreign countries, especially Japan.
I restricted my travels during our first year at home, other than to a transition office in Atlanta, where our presidential library and The Carter Center were being planned. Our house and lot had deteriorated badly during our four years in Washington, and this gave us a lot to do. We acquired a half interest in twenty-one acres in the North Georgia mountains and had a small log cabin built alongside Turniptown Creek. I designed and built all the beds, chairs, tables, storage cabinets, and smaller fixtures needed to furnish our “second home.” I made stools and dining room chairs out of green wood, using Colonial-era techniques that required only hand tools and did not include nails, screws, or glue to hold the pieces together. I built four ladder–back hickory chairs that were auctioned at Sotheby’s in October 1983 for $21,000 each to help fund The Carter Center.
The woodworking and artwork have been personal pleasures for me, and I expect that an expanding part of my life will be devoted to them as I grow older and have fewer activities away from home.
This began a long process of my contributing a piece of furniture almost every year to our Center to be sold at auction. During recent years I have donated one of my original paintings, or a copy, for the same purpose. Winning bids have ranged from $50,000 to $1 million. In addition, I have given much of my furniture to my children and grandchildren, with cradles being used several times. I realized many years ago that I do not have any special talent as an artist or craftsman, but with a lot of study and practice I have become fairly proficient. More recently, I have written an explanation of techniques and materials used and my reasons for painting particular subjects, and these texts will accompany about sixty-five of my paintings in a high-quality coffee table book, to be sold at an elevated price with the proceeds going to The Carter Center.
The woodworking and artwork have been personal pleasures for me, and I expect that an expanding part of my life will be devoted to them as I grow older and have fewer activities away from home.
Former Presidents
Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford were the two living presidents when I was elected, and I was determined to treat them with respect, to keep them as thoroughly briefed on current events as possible, and to call on them to help me with challenging issues when bipartisan cooperation would be important. President Nixon was in a state of partial disrepute as a result of the Watergate scandals and his forced resignation from office, and he was maintaining a high degree of family privacy. I admired him for his accomplishments while in office, especially regarding environmental issues and his opening relations with China. I knew President Ford to be a formidable political adversary from our contested campaign, exceptionally knowledgeable about congressional affairs, and a completely honorable and dedicated public servant.
Ronald Reagan Library Dedication, November 4, 1991, at Simi Valley, California. Lady Bird Johnson, the Carters, the Fords, the Nixons, the Reagans, and the Bushes.
I began giving both of them regular briefings on domestic and international affairs, from either National Security Adviser Brzezinski or one of my other top assistants. They responded by offering to help me on controversial issues and did so throughout my term. This is a diary entry I made on March 24, 1977:
“President Ford came by and our scheduled thirty-minute meeting lasted three times as long. He expressed concerns about deficits, which I share. He also met Dr. Brzezinski and arranged for continuing briefings concerning international affairs.”
After about six months, Nixon sent me word that the briefings were excessive and asked that they be provided only when he requested more information on specific subjects. President Ford relished the visits, and he and I had an agreement that he would spend some time with me in the Oval Office whenever he was near Washington.
Anwar Sadat was assassinated in October 1981 by militant terrorists, and President Reagan and Vice President George H. W. Bush decided not to attend the funeral. Instead, we three former presidents were given this honor, and we traveled to Cairo on a government plane. Nixon stayed in the region, and Ford and I returned together. We shared a small compartment and spent most of the trip in an increasingly personal conversation. Somewhat to our surprise, we formed an intimate friendship that extended to our wives and children. I remember that when we assembled at the White House in 2000 to celebrate its two-hundredth year as the president’s home, the historians commented that the relationship between Jerry Ford and Jimmy Carter was closer than any other presidents, at least in recent history, who had served there. During the summer of 2006 I received a regular call from Jerry, and after an exchange of good wishes he said he had a special favor to ask of me. I agreed in advance. He asked if I would give the eulogy at his funeral. After stammering for a few moments, I responded that I would do so if he would make me the same commitment. A few months later, I was grieved but honored to fulfill my promise.
Unfortunately, my relationship with President Ronald Reagan was strained, and on several early trips abroad during his administration I learned that the U.S. ambassadors had been instructed not to give me any assistance or even to acknowledge my presence. This happened in Turkey, Argentina, and several African nations. My early requests to the president for briefings on key issues were declined or ignored, and when I threatened to call a press conference on the subject, I received a briefing that was largely extracted from current news reports. However, I got along well with Reagan’s five national security advisers and with Secretary of State George Shultz. Especially on my frequent visits to the Middle East region, I would be requested to deliver messages or questions to leaders and was often invited to come to the State Department to make a personal report on my observations.
My best and most enjoyable experience with presidents was with George H. W. Bush and his secretary of state, James Baker. Throughout their term in office, they used the resources of our Center as fully as possible, encouraged our involvement in politically sensitive areas, and even sent a plane to bring me directly to the White House for a report after some of my foreign visits.
President Bill Clinton never initiated any request for cooperation with The Carter Center, but he responded to some of my proposals. I appreciated these opportunities for us to help alleviate international tension by accepting requests from contending parties to mediate disputes.
After the contested election in 2000, where the Supreme Court prevented the recount of all Florida votes and ruled that George W. Bush was the elected president, we decided to attend the inaugural ceremonies in January. There were few “voluntary” Democrats present, and the Bush family members were gracious to us. The new president Bush asked if there was anything he could do for me, and I made my only request of him: that he attempt to complete the peace agreement between North and South Sudan, on which our Center had been working for many years but which had been blocked by previous White House policies. He agreed, and kept his promise. As I increasingly promoted the concepts of peace and human rights in my books, classroom lectures, public statements, and forums, it was inevitable that some differences on these issues would surface. Once President Bush invited me to the White House for a full report to him and his national security adviser after I visited Cuba.
Because I had been out of office for more than three decades when Barack Obama became president, there were few opportunities for a direct association between The Carter Center and the White House. During this period I have enjoyed friendly and adequate contacts with Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and John Kerry. Since we maintain an active role in the Holy Land, this has been especially important to us after Secretary Kerry renewed the U.S. effort to bring peace to the region. An additional reason for a reduced relationship with the White House is that the primary work of The Carter Center has shifted over the years from peace negotiations to controlling and eliminating tropical diseases and monitoring troubled elections.
On most occasions, Rosalynn and I have attended the national
Democratic conventions and always the inaugurations of new presidents. In fact, it was on one of these occasions, twelve years after I left office, that I met my first Democratic president: when Bill Clinton was inaugurated.
A Future America
The United States is facing an inevitable reduction in its relative global influence with the rise in economic and political strength of China, India, Brazil, South Africa, and other nations. My hope is that our leaders will capitalize on our country’s most admirable qualities. When people in other nations face a challenge or a problem, it would be good to have them look to Washington for assistance or as a sterling example.
Our government should be known to be opposed to war, dedicated to the resolution of disputes by peaceful means, and, whenever possible, eager to accomplish this goal. We should be seen as the unswerving champion of human rights, both among our own citizens and within the global community. America should be the focal point around which other nations can rally against threats to the quality of our common environment. We should be willing to lead by example in sharing our great wealth with those in need. Our own society should provide equal opportunity for all citizens and assure that they are provided the basic necessities of life.
There would be no sacrifice in exemplifying these traits. Instead, our nation’s well-being would be enhanced by restoring the trust, admiration, and friendship that our nation formerly enjoyed among other peoples. At the same time, all Americans could be united in a common commitment to revive and nourish the political and moral values that we have espoused and sought during the past 240 years.