A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety (13 page)

The other issue was much more important in my district, because the nearest senior college was Auburn University in Alabama, where our students had to pay out-of-state fees. The two junior colleges eligible for promotion were Georgia Southwestern in Americus (my county seat) and a larger institution in Columbus. The elected governor, Carl Sanders, had promised the people of Americus that he would support their request but had backed down under pressure from Columbus. Their supporter, Bo Callaway, was our district representative on the Board of Regents. He was wealthy, politically influential, and chairman of the committee that decided on the academic status of all colleges. I was at a great disadvantage, except that I was chairman of the subcommittee that would have to approve any funding for the university system. The governor wanted a new dental school in his hometown, and I had the proposed legislation
in my pocket. Following some quiet but intense negotiations between me and the governor, he used his influence among the regents, the dental school was funded, and Georgia Southwestern became a senior college. Primarily because of this achievement, I was reelected in 1964 without opposition for another two-year term. But it left some bad feelings between me and Callaway.

From our marriage in 1946 until I decided to become a candidate for the state senate, in 1962, I maintained a loving and respectful relationship with Rosalynn but followed the example of my father and other men I knew by making the primary decisions in our family. From the beginning, she was quite shy and never wanted me to leave her side at navy cocktail parties or other events when strangers might be present. I was at sea a lot during those early years, and trusted her to manage our family budget and finances and to make most of the decisions about household affairs and raising our children. At the same time, I felt that it was my exclusive responsibility to make final judgments about other, more far-reaching affairs. I cannot understand in retrospect why I didn’t at least consult her concerning decisions that affected all our family, including leaving the navy, dividing my father’s estate, and running for public office.

As I began to expand our agricultural supply business by visiting potential new customers and becoming involved in professional organizations, I needed someone to run the office while I was away, and Rosalynn offered to help me. She studied a book on accounting, and she and our boys began working at the warehouse in the afternoons. Over time she accommodated our return to Plains and proved to be an invaluable partner in managing Carter’s Warehouse, with hundreds of decisions to be made every week concerning our multiple customers and their reliability in repaying their accumulated debts as they bought seed, fertilizer, pesticides, and feed for animals. She also kept the books for our purchases and sales, and was able to ascertain which of our many enterprises were profitable
or losing money and what might be done to improve their performance. I became heavily reliant on her judgment and learned to consult her routinely.

When she joined me in political campaigning—always appearing without me—she was effective in securing support from doubtful voters, and I soon realized that people were more inclined to express their beliefs or concerns to her than to me. I was surprised to discover that she liked the art of politics: analyzing issues, allocating funds, devising strategy, formulating proposals, traveling, arranging nightly accommodations on the strenuous campaign trail, initiating radio and television interviews, and even delivering speeches. In fact, she liked the entire political process more than I did.

For the first time in our marriage, we became real partners in every aspect of our lives—but still managed to give each other plenty of space to do our own things.

As the 1964 general election approached, there was the beginning of a political revolution in our state. Because of President Lyndon Johnson’s successful promotion of civil rights, he was very unpopular in the Deep South.

A number of Georgia’s officeholders defected from the Democratic Party and became Republicans. It would be many years before the Republican Party became dominant, but this was the beginning. One of the defectors, Bo Callaway, was the state chairman of Barry Goldwater’s presidential campaign against Johnson in 1964 and also became a Republican candidate to represent our congressional district. Both won handily. My mother was Johnson’s campaign manager in our county and took a lot of abuse. Her headquarters was in the old Windsor Hotel in Americus, and at the end of a working day her parked automobile was often covered with graffiti or her radio antenna bent or broken. My sons were roughed up at school and sometimes came home crying, but Rosalynn and I
consoled them, and they continued to have Democratic stickers on their book sacks and lunch boxes.

Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman came to our county to campaign on Johnson’s behalf, and Mother arranged for a political rally at the local baseball field. We attended, along with about a hundred white citizens and two thousand African-Americans. Vice President Hubert Humphrey and his wife, Muriel, also made a tour through Georgia, and Mama was asked to accompany them. One of their stops was in Moultrie, where Humphrey was to speak to a joint session of civic clubs. Muriel was scheduled to meet with women for luncheon in a local hotel. Rosalynn was with them, and my sister Gloria Spann was driving. As they approached the hotel, Muriel stated that she would not attend the meeting if it was not racially integrated. With a secret wink, Mama said, “Gloria, go in the hotel and make sure everything is okay.” Gloria returned after a few minutes, gave a thumbs-up sign, and they attended the luncheon. When it was over, the black maids put their aprons back on and cleaned up the dining hall. Mama was proud of both Muriel and Gloria.

Racial attitudes were unclear in Plains, with most of our white citizens remaining silent. This changed when black activists began to enter churches with white congregations to demand participation in worship services. There was a confrontation at the Methodist church in Americus that aroused international attention when black Christians were refused admission and knelt in front of the church, surrounded by cameras from the major television networks. Although we had not had any altercation at our church, the eleven other deacons decided, over my objection, to establish a policy that black worshipers could not enter Plains Baptist Church. Like all important decisions of Baptist congregations, the issue had to be determined by a vote of the entire church membership. Rosalynn and I were attending a wedding of my niece north of Atlanta on Saturday, and we had to get up early and drive back to Plains before the Sunday morning service. Only about forty members normally attended a church conference, but about two hundred were present for this debate and decision. There was a vote after the chairman and I made our conflicting presentations, and 6 people, including 5 in our family, voted against
the recommendation of the deacons. Fifty voted aye, and all the others abstained! That afternoon, many church members called to say that they agreed with me but didn’t want to aggravate other members of their families or alienate their customers. For my family, this demonstration of conflicting opinions was the real turning point and proved to be indicative of the general attitude in Georgia. One by one, the two hundred local school districts accepted the mandate of the U.S. Supreme Court during the years ahead, and none of our governors defied the federal government by standing in the schoolhouse door, as governors had in Arkansas, Mississippi, and Alabama.

As my second state senator’s term was ending, I decided to oppose Bo Callaway in his reelection campaign for Congress, despite his great advantage as a wealthy and relatively popular incumbent who had been showered with special favors by the Republican Party. Our personal differences were exacerbated by his being a Democratic defector and a graduate of West Point. I was campaigning almost full-time when, just a few weeks before the primary, Bo decided to withdraw from the congressional campaign and run for governor, leaving me with no opposition. Our Democratic gubernatorial candidate, former governor Ernest Vandiver, withdrew from the governor’s race, for health reasons, he claimed. I went to Atlanta and tried to recruit other prominent Democrats to run but was unsuccessful. I feared that the primary choice would be between Callaway and the archsegregationist Lester Maddox, who had become infamous by standing in the door of his Atlanta restaurant with a pick handle, threatening to use it on any black person who attempted to enter his establishment. He was a fiery orator and vowed that there would be no racial mixing in Georgia if he became governor.

With pledges of support from a few young Democrats, I decided to relinquish my assured seat in the U.S. Congress and run for governor. Hamilton Jordan and his girlfriend Nancy Konigsmark, both students at the University of Georgia, volunteered to help me and were key staff members throughout my political career. I made rapid progress in my brief statewide campaign, but without any prepared organization and with very little money, I failed in my attempt, and Lester Maddox was
nominated as the Democratic candidate with Callaway as the unopposed Republican. These two met each other in the general election, along with former governor Ellis Arnall, who ran as an independent. When no one achieved a clear majority, the Georgia constitution authorized the state legislature to choose the governor, and the overwhelmingly Democratic legislators selected Maddox. They believed, correctly, that they could take over many of the powers that Georgia’s governor had always enjoyed. Until then the governor had chosen the speaker of the house, made final decisions on top committee assignments, and decided when or if proposed legislation would be brought to a vote.

I was deeply disappointed and disillusioned with politics and with life in general. My sister Ruth Carter Stapleton was a famous evangelist and author who was living in North Carolina, and she came to help me overcome my bitterness and despair. Using Bible verses to strengthen her appeal, she pointed out that everyone was destined to failures, disappointments, embarrassments, and sorrows, and advised me to forget about myself for a while, strengthen my religious faith, learn from my political defeat, and become stronger, more confident, resilient, and prepared to reach some well-considered alternative goals in life.

I took Ruth’s advice and volunteered to participate in what Baptists call “pioneer missions.” I was directed to go to Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, where my partner would be a farmer from Texas named Milo Pennington. With a small budget and a long-distance telephone service that could be used only at night and on weekends, a group of volunteers at Pennsylvania State University had called everyone in the Lock Haven telephone book. They identified those who had no religious commitment but might be willing to discuss the subject. About one hundred families were found, and our task was to visit each one and talk to them about our faith. Milo had been on other missions of this kind, but this was a new experience for me.

I was nervous and somewhat embarrassed, but when I met Milo he tried to reassure me. “We don’t have to worry about the reception we will get or the results of our efforts. We’ll pray a lot, do our best, and depend on the Holy Spirit to determine the outcome.” This attitude was foreign to me, accustomed to accomplishing almost every goal I had sought. Milo and I found a three-dollar-a-day double room and met a state game and fish ranger who was a Christian and would be our host and adviser. With names and addresses on a handful of three-by-five cards, we went from one home to another, always pausing to pray before knocking on the door. With some exceptions, we were invited in to meet with the family members after we explained our mission. Milo was a simple, relatively uneducated man, blessed with supreme self-assurance. I agreed that he should be the primary witness, and he would explain, in basic words, the plan of salvation: All of us fall short of the glory or perfection of God and deserve punishment; but God loves us, and through his grace and our faith in Christ, not because we have earned it, we are offered complete forgiveness. Jesus has taken on himself our punishment, and through repenting and accepting this forgiveness, we are reconciled with God and, with the Holy Spirit dwelling within us, can have a full life now and forever.

Some families refused to let us enter, some said they were already Christians, others seemed amused, and still others seemed to have been eagerly awaiting our message and invitation. I was at first uncomfortable with the way Milo made his presentations. He used simple examples from the lives of people he had known, and his own religious experiences. I was amazed, therefore, at the emotional response of many of the people, who were often in tears. We would join them in prayer as they pledged to change their lives and accept the faith we described to them. I knew the Holy Spirit was present. One night that week, I called Rosalynn and described some of the visits. I told her that I had no trepidation about our future encounters and, strangely, no sense of responsibility for the results of our often awkward presentations. I added, “I feel that it’s in the hands of God.” And the results we achieved—the transforming experiences we shared with the people to whom we witnessed—were my first encounter with the remarkable effect of Christian faith.

Not all our efforts succeeded. Once we climbed some outside stairs to see a woman living by herself in a small apartment. When we began our presentation, she jumped up from her chair and shouted, “Not me! I don’t transgress against God, and I certainly do not deserve any punishment.” Despite our further efforts to explain, she ordered us out of her home. We knocked on the front door of a fine house owned by the local General Motors dealer, and he refused to let us enter or speak to him or others in the home. Another memorable visit came later that week, in the poorest part of the city. When we asked a Salvation Army worker how to find our targeted address, she told us it was above some stores, then asked if we
really
wanted to go there. As we began to ascend the steps from an alley door, we heard a stream of invective coming from above—language I’d heard only in the navy, but this time in a female voice. Milo and I looked at each other and finally decided to continue. A young woman received us with amusement and soon let us know that she was the madam of a small whorehouse, with three other “girls” as her partners.