Carter has a long history of racism as a public official including his stint on a local school board and his campaign for governor of Georgia:
In his 1982 book, Keeping Faith, Carter disingenuously said he “was not directly involved in the early struggles to end racial discrimination.” No kidding — in fact, he directly and unambiguously supported segregation. When Carter returned to Plains, Georgia, to become a peanut farmer after serving in the Navy, he became a member of the Sumter County School Board, which did not implement the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision handed down by the Supreme Court. Instead, the board continued to segregate school children on the streets of Carter’s hometown.Or a more recent example:
As Laughlin McDonald, director of the ACLU’s Voting Project, relates in his book A Voting Rights Odyssey: Black Enfranchisement in Georgia, Carter’s board tried to stop the construction of a new “Elementary Negro School” in 1956. Local white citizens had complained that the school would be “too close” to a white school. As a result, “the children, both colored and white, would have to travel the same streets and roads in order to reach their respective schools.” The prospect of black and white children commingling on the streets on their way to school was apparently so horrible to Carter that he requested that the state school board stop construction of the black school until a new site could be found. The state board turned down Carter’s request because of “the staggering cost.” Carter and the rest of the Sumter County School Board then reassured parents at a meeting on October 5, 1956, that the board “would do everything in its power to minimize simultaneous traffic between white and colored students in route to and from school.”
Carter won the governorship of Georgia in 1970 via a race-baiting campaign. In his 2004 book The Real Jimmy Carter, Steven Hayward writes that Carter's campaign staff sent an anonymous mailer "to barbershops, country churches, and rural law enforcement officers containing a grainy photo of [his Democratic opponent Carl] Sanders, part owner of the Atlanta Hawks NBA franchise, at an after-game locker room victory celebration. Two black players were pouring champagne over Sanders's head. The Atlanta Constitution noted, 'In the context of the sports pages, it was a routine shot ... But in the context of this political campaign it was a dangerous smear that injected both race, alcohol, and high living into the campaign.' Carter's senior campaign aides Bill Pope, Hamilton Jordan, and Jerry Rafshoon were behind the mailing; Pope was even spotted passing out the flyers at a Ku Klux Klan rally ... The Carter campaign also produced a leaflet noting that Sanders had paid tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr.Before Jimmy Carter accuses others of racism, he should examine what is in his own heart. The peanut president is a racist that has shown hatred of both African Americans and Jews. To quote former President George W. Bush on Jimmy Carter, "If I'm ever 82 years old and acting like that — have someone put me away." Maybe its time to put Carter away.
"... Carter also implied that he met privately with the head of the States Rights Council, a white supremacist group, and campaigned in all-white private schools that were known as 'segregation academies,' where he promised that he would do 'everything' to support their existence. 'I have no trouble pitching for [George] Wallace [segregationist] votes and the black votes at the same time,' Carter told a reporter. Carter also said to another reporter, 'I can win this election without a single black vote.'"
Hayward goes on to cite this post-election anecdote recorded by Carter's most sympathetic biographer Peter Bourne: "'Affecting a South Georgia accent and humorously mimicking his campaign colleagues, Rafshoon would say, "We coulda won by a lot more if we'd bin able to stop Jimmah saying so many nahs things abaht nigguhs."' Carter's other senior campaign aide, Bill Pope, was even more blunt, telling the Washington Post that they had run a 'nigger campaign.'"
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