| On Sunday, former president Jimmy Carter died at age 100, making Joe Biden, 82, the oldest of the five living US presidents. Many world leaders and journalists, including our publisher, Katrina vanden Heuvel, looked back fondly on Carter—at least his post-presidential life. “He did more to advocate for peace as an ex-president than most politicians do in the entirety of their careers,” writes vanden Heuvel.
But the former president, who accused Israel of human rights abuses in his 2006 book, Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, did not begin his career as a social justice advocate. Joseph Crespino, the Jimmy Carter professor of history at Emory University, writes that Carter kept his head down following the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954. It took until 1971 for Carter to say that “the time for discrimination is over.” In 1976, Chris Lehmann writes, Carter still wasn’t running on civil rights but as “a revivalist preacher,” calling on a sinful nation to repent and appealing to white evangelicals. He won the evangelical vote that year—and a Democratic presidential nominee would never win it again.
Reckoning with Carter’s legacy means celebrating what he got right while acknowledging where he erred. Because after all, like anyone else, he was human.
Onwards to 2025.
-Alana Pockros
Engagement Editor, The Nation |
