Jimmy Carter sounds off on boyhood, influences, politics

Former president on CNN's 'Larry King Live'

Jimmy Carter's new book "An Hour Before Daylight" describes the former president's childhood growing up on a Georgia farm

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(CNN) -- Despite growing up in the segregated, rural South during the Depression, Jimmy Carter credits three black people -- as well as two whites -- with having the greatest influence on his life, he told CNN's Larry King on Monday night's "Larry King Live."

Carter was on King's show to talk about his new book, "An Hour Before Daylight: Memories of a Rural Boyhood." He also took the opportunity to discuss the 2000 presidential election and his thoughts on George W. Bush.

When he was young, the former president recalled, his whole existence was based around the family farm in Plains, Georgia. Though the community was segregated, it was close-knit, he explained.

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"It was 15 years or 20 years before the time of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. and nobody questioned the absolute segregation of black and white people," he said, "except that, on our farm, the intimacy with which we lived with our black neighbors was almost astounding."

The young Carter struck up close relationships with a number of the African-Americans in the area. These bonds have stayed with him, he said.

"Toward the end of the book, I try to analyze -- in addition to my mother and father -- who were the five people who basically shaped my whole life," he told King. "Only two of them are white. The other three were black people who took me under their wings or who inspired me in different ways with their personal courage or with their knowledge or with a profound relationship with other people.

"So I would say three black people shaped my whole life," he added. "Although we lived in different kinds of homes and that we had different treatment under the law, we had mutual respect for one another. And that's a lesson I hope that our nation can continue to learn."

The title "An Hour Before Daylight," Carter said, has a deliberate double meaning.

"An hour before daylight showed the beginning of our day on the farm," he said. "It also, symbolically, shows that we were 15 years before ... we woke up to the treatment we were giving our African-American neighbors."

Life on the farm began at 4 a.m., Carter recalled. A man named Jack Clark, in charge of the barn and barnyard animals, would ring a bell and the family would get out of bed to work the fields. The plowing continued until sundown, after which the Carters ate supper and went right to bed. The house had no running water until Jimmy was 13 and no electricity until he was 15.

It was a hard life, especially during the Depression, he remembered.

"Poverty was all-pervasive. The average annual income of our neighbors was less than $75 a year," he said. "And we had millions of Yankees who moved down to the South during that time when their factories closed." Every day, he added, "we'd have between 200 and 300 hoboes that walked by on the dirt road going from Birmingham (Alabama) to Savannah, Georgia, or vice-versa, or riding on the open boxcars in the railroad right in front of our house."

In the many years since, Carter has risen to the United States' highest office and traveled the world on behalf of his diplomatic and human rights organization, the Carter Center. Yet he still retains a fondness for the land and the old farm, he said.

"The land that I own now has been in our family, about half of it, since 1833, and our family bought the other half about 1904," he said. His own grandchildren will be the seventh generation to own it.

Ironically, Carter narrowly avoided having to sell his property. After he lost the 1980 presidential election, he found out his business was $1 million in debt. By selling the rights to his autobiography as well as the business, Carter was able to hold onto his farm.

In his post-presidential days, Carter was determined not to serve on corporate boards, and instead devoted himself to creating the Carter Center, which promotes human rights and international relations throughout the world.

He has no idea what Vice President Al Gore will do after Gore's 2000 election loss, he said to King.

"I don't think he's made up his mind what to do," he said. "I understand he has had some possibilities to go to work in universities, which I've done." Carter is on the faculty at Emory University in Atlanta.

Despite his personal loyalty to Gore, Carter is realistic about the vice president's future in politics. "I think it really depends to a large extent on what the Clinton family is going to do ... (They) could very well be the dominant factors in the Democratic Party, which would kind of push Al to the side."

But, added Carter, a dark horse could triumph in 2004. "I know how rapidly things can change in the political situation in this country," said the man who was referred to as "Jimmy Who?" in his upset 1976 campaign. Thus, making predictions for Gore is "completely premature," he said.

Carter doesn't know the president-elect, George W. Bush, very well, but said he generally approved of Bush's cabinet choices. He also noted the parallels between the beginnings of their two "outsider" administrations.

"He had to do the same thing I did when I went to Washington, and that is to choose people who were very experienced in previous administrations," said Carter. "And I also chose a very experienced vice president, (Walter) Fritz Mondale, who kind of tided me over into my learning process when I got to Washington."

However, he added, Bush will have to extend peace offerings to a number of constituencies. Indeed, the basic election rules in the United States and particularly Florida, he said, are so inconsistent that if the election had happened elsewhere, the Carter Center "would not even go into those countries to try to ascertain if the election was fair or not."

Still, Carter was optimistic that Bush could patch things up. "The result of this election has indeed alienated some voter groups," he said. "(But) I don't have any doubt that George W. Bush, with his experience as an effective governor of Texas, will make every effort to reach out to them."

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The Carter Center
Simon & Schuster

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