A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety (14 page)

She obviously enjoyed arguing with us and asking leading questions, which we answered as effectively as possible. Eventually, we began to talk about her background and found her to be especially bitter toward her straitlaced parents, on whom she blamed her present plight. Her father, she said, had made improper sexual advances, and as a teenager she’d finally had the nerve to tell her mother. An angry and tearful family confrontation resulted, and both parents accused the girl of lying and being obsessed with sexual fantasies. She ran away from home and became a prostitute “to support myself,” she said. She had had no contact with her family for eight years. We had been there almost two hours when she said we would have to leave but invited us to come back the next day—our last one in Lock Haven.

We prayed for guidance that night, but our return brought no miracles. We read John 8:2–11, where Jesus forgives the woman “taken in adultery” and says to her accusers and would-be executioners, “Let him that is without sin among you cast the first stone.” After everyone has left, he tells the woman, “I do not condemn you. Go, and sin no more.” Despite our best efforts, this woman could not consider herself worthy of God’s
forgiveness—because at that time she was not willing to “sin no more.” She did agree to call her parents and actually dialed their number while we were there. When there was no answer, she promised to try again later. I have prayed often that she was reconciled with God and her parents. Despite these apparent failures, more than forty people in Lock Haven agreed to start a new church, and we helped them rent an abandoned building near the end of the runway of Piper Aircraft Company. I came home from Lock Haven with a heightened sense of the possible intimacy between a human being and God.

I later went on a similar missionary trip to Springfield, Massachusetts, and my assignment was to witness to Spanish-speaking families, most of whom were from Puerto Rico. They were very poor and lived in ramshackle, almost abandoned apartment buildings near a large textile mill that had closed. Those who were lucky enough to find work would travel in buses to labor in nearby fields of vegetables and shade-grown tobacco. My partner this time was a Cuban-American named Eloy Cruz, pastor of a small Baptist church in Brooklyn, New York. I was proud when I was chosen for this task because I knew the language, but I soon realized that the Spanish vocabulary I had known and used in the navy was quite different from the one we were now using to teach the gospel. Reverend Cruz did almost all the witnessing, and my contribution was limited to reading the Bible verses that we chose in advance of each visit. I was amazed at how effective Cruz was in reaching people’s hearts. They would become emotional and sometimes weep when he explained to them some aspect of Jesus’ ministry and how his life could relate to them.

Once a woman opened her door surrounded by five or six children. When we told them the reason for our visit, her husband, who was sitting across the cluttered room, immediately tried to hide a half-empty beer bottle behind his chair. We told him that Jesus had no objection to drinking wine. As Eloy Cruz explained the story, I read from the book of John about Lazarus, Mary, and Martha, three of the closest friends of Jesus. Lazarus had died, and Jesus was preparing to restore him to life. This was a dramatic story, even with my inept reading of the Spanish scripture. After Jesus wept, and then called to Lazarus, our listeners waited
breathlessly. When the dead man came forth from the tomb, everyone broke into cheers. Later, they knelt with Reverend Cruz and me and accepted Christ as savior. I had wonderful experiences every day as I worked with this remarkable man. He always seemed to know exactly what to say and formed an instant intimacy with the poor people whose homes we entered. With the simplest words, he could capture their imaginations and souls.

I was embarrassed by the deference with which Eloy Cruz treated me. For one thing, I owned an automobile—something he’d never dreamed of having. Furthermore, I had been a state senator, and even a candidate for governor (he seemed to ignore my defeat). He considered himself “just” a Cuban, and a refugee, but I knew the opposite; he was a great man. As we prepared to say good-bye at the end of the week, I asked him what made him so gentle but so effective as a Christian witness, and he was quite disconcerted. He finally said,
“Pues, nuestro Señor no puede hacer mucho con un hombre que es duro”
(Well, our Savior cannot do much with a man who is hard). He noted that Christ himself, although the Son of God, was always gentle with those who were poor or weak. He went on to say that he tried to follow a simple rule: “You only have to have two loves in your life: for God, and for the person in front of you at any particular time.”

Eloy Cruz’s words have had a profound effect on my life, and I often remind myself of them. There are times when courage is required, and genuine humility is not easy to retain for those of us who are blessed with almost every possible advantage. To put myself on an equal basis with a homeless person, a drug addict, a destitute African family, or some neighbor who might be lonely or in need tends to make me feel uncomfortable. But when I succeed, I find that I am ennobling them—and myself. This is not just an idealistic theory, because I know from a few such occasions in my life that it has been true.

I learned some profound and lasting lessons from the combination of my political defeat and my recovery from it, which can best be encapsulated by advice given to us as schoolchildren by our teacher Miss Julia Coleman. She would say, “You must accommodate changing times but cling to unchanging principles.” (I quoted her when I was inaugurated
as president and when I received the Nobel Peace Prize.) I have tried, at least most of the time, to set high objectives, to accept failures and disappointments with relative equanimity, to acknowledge and try to correct my mistakes and weaknesses, and then to set different and sometimes higher goals for the future. I seek as much help and advice as possible, and if these ambitions are worthwhile and seem to be justified, I just do my best and don’t fear the potential adverse consequences. My experiences in Lock Haven and Springfield have helped me apply my Christian faith much more regularly to my secular life, and to resolve the apparent conflicts more easily and consistently.

A
fter a brief respite, I continued with my business and community affairs but began another campaign for governor, which I did not intend to lose. At the end of most days I would drive to places throughout Georgia, making speeches or participating in public events before returning home late at night. I took a course in remembering names and stayed in touch with as many influential people as I could remember, and we sent personal notes to many of them. When three years had passed, I was thoroughly familiar with our state and the issues that seemed important to our people, and had accumulated a voluminous list of potential supporters. There were a large number of farmers and others I had known in my seed business, and a total of 208 Lions Clubs in Georgia where I was well known. I didn’t have any billboards or public announcements during this time, just campaigned quietly and without publicity. I was concerned by a public opinion poll that showed former governor Carl Sanders with an 84 percent favorable rating.

During the early summer of 1970, we could spare more time away from the warehouse with planting season over, so Rosalynn and my sons began campaigning also. There were many textile manufacturers and paper pulp mills in Georgia, and we were at their main entrances handing out pamphlets when employees went to work early in the morning. My cousin Hugh was in charge of financing, and we had a goal of ten cents per person in each county (which we reached in only a few places). A man
named David Rabhan owned a twin-engine Cessna airplane and volunteered to fly me around the state. He had a wide range of friends among black leaders, including Martin Luther King, Sr., and arranged for me to meet with them and speak in their churches. Many high school and college students volunteered to help, including Jody Powell, a former cadet in the Air Force Academy and now a graduate student at Emory University. Hamilton Jordan served as campaign chairman.

There were many memorable events during the campaign, but one that I can’t forget occurred in Bainbridge. I had first visited with Sam Griffin, the editor of the local newspaper, which was founded by his father, former governor Marvin Griffin, and then I went through the business district, going in all the stores and offices to shake hands and hand out my pamphlets. I did the same thing when I encountered someone on the sidewalk. As I approached one burly young man, he turned away and looked toward the wall. I presumed that he recognized me and was either supporting my opponent or just kidding me. When I touched his shoulder, he turned and struck me on my jaw with all his force. I stumbled backward and fell in the middle of the street. While automobile traffic stopped, I slowly recovered my senses and some people helped me to my feet and to a bench on the sidewalk. The police detained the young man and asked if I wanted to press charges. By this time, Sam Griffin had arrived, and after a few minutes he explained that my assailant was a former U.S. marine who had been discharged because of mental problems. He told the police that he thought I had been sent to take him to “an insane asylum,” and I told Sam to apologize to him and his family and that I was the one who might have been at fault. I drove home and rested for a day before going back on the campaign trail. I had difficulty speaking, but an X-ray revealed that my jaw was only cracked and not broken. I remember that
The
Atlanta
Constitution,
which was supporting former governor Sanders and derogating all his opponents, had the headline
U.S. MARINE PUNCHES CARTER
, describing my being knocked into the street but giving no explanation of the circumstances.

As I gained in popular support, the Atlanta newspapers did everything possible with both news coverage and editorial comments to picture me
as a racist. They failed to report my many meetings with black citizens, and attributed to me the aspersions cast on Sanders as a liberal by any conservative persons or news media. My campaign commercials emphasized my background as a former submariner and now a full-time peanut farmer, with photographs of me and our sons working in my fields and warehouse. Sanders extolled his successful life, emphasizing his exalted social and economic status, with a pervasive slogan:
CARL SANDERS
OUGHT
TO BE GOVERNOR AGAIN
. I remember long TV commercials showing him flying his own airplane and including a series of endorsements by political and business leaders from Atlanta. We relied on personal contacts by my family with people in their own communities and at work sites. My emphasizing my working-class background made it almost inevitable that class distinctions would be drawn. I welcomed the support of more conservative Georgians, including Marvin Griffin, who had been defeated for governor in 1962, but I was never tempted to indicate any deviation from the moderate racial beliefs I had always exhibited, in the navy and during my time in Plains.

We always lacked money, but our family members, almost always in different places, joined my efforts in meeting people and distributing pamphlets in factory shift lines, at all-night singings, at professional baseball and football games, and along the streets of as many of Georgia’s six hundred towns and cities as possible. By Election Day we figured that Rosalynn and I had shaken hands personally with 600,000 Georgians. I received 48 percent of the Democratic Party votes on the first ballot, and defeated Sanders handily in a two-man runoff. In the general election I prevailed over the Republican candidate, Hal Suit, a prominent television personality from Atlanta.

During the final days of the general election campaign, I was flying from Brunswick to Newnan, Georgia, sitting in the copilot’s seat alongside Rabhan. He was taking a nap and I was controlling the plane when both engines stopped. He pretended to still be asleep while I punched him hard with my left elbow. He awoke, waited until the Cessna had lost a few hundred feet of altitude, then reached over casually and switched a valve to connect standby fuel tanks and bring the engines back to life. I
was furious while he laughed at my discomfort. Finally, I also joined in the merriment, and we had a conversation about the impending end of the campaign. He had helped me very generously, and I asked David what I might do to repay him. He asked if I had a paper and pencil, and I found an aviator’s map of Georgia with some blank space on it. He dictated, “The time for racial discrimination is over in Georgia,” and said, “This is what I want you to say when you are inaugurated.”

I worked hard on my inaugural address. In eight minutes, I said that I had probably traveled throughout Georgia more than any other previous candidate, “and I say to you quite frankly that the time for racial discrimination is over. No poor, rural, weak, or black person should ever again have to bear the additional burden of being deprived of the opportunity of an education, a job, or simple justice.” There were several young and progressive governors elected in Southern states in 1970, but this statement made news. A drawing of me was on the cover of
Time
magazine with the headline
DIXIE WHISTLES A DIFFERENT TUNE.

There were momentous events during my first years in public office as state senator and governor. In 1963 Martin Luther King, Jr., made his historic “I have a dream” speech to a massive crowd in Washington. King, Bobby Kennedy, and President John Kennedy were assassinated, Richard Nixon was forced to resign as president, and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in
Gideon v. Wainwright
that state courts are required under the Fourteenth Amendment to provide counsel in criminal cases to represent defendants unable to pay their own attorneys. My expectations were raised that this decision would address a serious flaw in our criminal justice system by eliminating the gross difference of treatment of black defendants that had stemmed from their having been excluded from voting or even jury duty during the generations of racial discrimination. In my brief speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington on the fiftieth anniversary of the King speech, I pointed out that there were more than 835,000 black inmates in
our nation’s jails, five times as many as when I left the White House, in 1980. I said that a young black boy in America has a one-in-three chance of being a prisoner during his lifetime.