E-mail a friendPresident Jimmy Carter
airdate September 8, 2008
Jimmy Carter served as the 39th U.S. President. In his one term, his administration oversaw the creation of the Energy and Education Departments, the Israel-Egypt Camp David Accords, the Soviet Union Salt II treaty and U.S. diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China. Since leaving office, he founded The Carter Center and has been active in Habitat for Humanity and international public policy. He's a Nobel laureate and best-selling author who's written more books than any U.S. president.
Former president explains how the next president can repair the United States' global reputation in 10 minutes. (1:25)
Full interview. (10:36)
President Jimmy Carter
Tavis: Just before Mother's Day this year former President Jimmy Carter paid us a visit for a conversation about his mother, Lillian, and the most recent book, "A Remarkable Mother." I began by asking President Carter about his mother's unyielding humanity in the face of terrible bigotry while growing up in the American South.
Jimmy Carter: It was 25 years before Rosa Parks sat in the front of a bus and before Martin Luther King Jr. became famous. But she felt that racial discrimination or persecution was wrong, even though the Supreme Court said separate but equal was permissible and all the churches did and all the schools did and all the politicians did.
My mama thought it was wrong, and she just violently opposed it. And she always treated Black and White people the same. I lived in a little community. We didn't have any White neighbors. All of our neighbors were Black. Mother was a registered nurse, that's why she came over to where my daddy lived and that's why they got married, thank goodness, and I was born.
But at first she was in charge of the operating room, and then later she began to nurse in the hospital itself, because we needed the money. And she got $4 a day for 12 hours' duty in a hospital room, and the hospital her and the patients paid the hospital. But she had a guaranteed $4 a day.
Later, she saw that the people that lived around Archery, Georgia, where I lived, didn't have nearly enough money to go to the hospital, so she began to nurse inside people's homes. In those days, a nurse went into a private duty home for 20 hours a day for $6. She never got paid because there wasn't much money, but they were -
Tavis: Twenty hours a day?
Carter: Twenty hours a day, yeah. So all the time I was in my late grammar school and high school years, my mother was nursing 20 hours a day. And she would come home at 10:00 at night and wash out her nurse's uniform and take a shower bath and write some notes, put it on her desk for me and my sister to do our chores next day.
Then she'd go back to work at 2:00 in the morning, so we very seldom saw Mama. But she felt that she was the only medical doctor, in effect, that these people would ever know. And they would pay her whenever they could, with a bushel of corn or with a pig or with some chickens or eggs or black-eyed peas during the season, things like that.
They tried to pay my mama, but she knew she wouldn't get the money. But that was her life, and then when she was 68 years old she joined the Peace Corps, and the only thing she asked for was I want to go where it's warm, I want to go where the people are poor and suffering, and I want to go where they're dark-skinned.
So they sent her to South India down there, what was then Bombay, which is now Mumbai, and that's where she was when she was 70 years old.
Tavis: There's a great story that you tell about how you had a chance to go to India.
Carter: Yeah, I did.
Tavis: Back to the same village. I'll let you tell the story, yeah.
Carter: All right. Two years ago, my wife and I went to India to build Habitat houses. We do that every year now for 25 years. And I chose a place near the little village where my mother was in the Peace Corps. So when she was there, she wasn't anything. In fact, she was an Untouchable, because she had to handle bodily fluids and things like that that made people Untouchables.
But now that I was president, had been president, I was welcomed in the village and it was a big deal when I went back there and so forth. But they brought in people that knew my mama when she was in the Peace Corps, and one of the - her favorite people in that little village, called Vickhroli, was a gardener. He worked for - the whole village was owned by one rich family called Godrej.
But he would sneak vegetables out and give them to my mother to eat, and she cooked her own meals in those days in the Peace Corps, and she didn't have any way to pay him back because she didn't have any money. So she decided that she would teach his little 6-year-old daughter how to read and write. So they took a picture of them sitting on a rock in my mother's - it's in the book - my mother's teaching a little girl.
So I wanted to meet the gardener. Unfortunately, he had passed away. But the people that owned the farm said, "I want you to meet his daughter." And I said, "Great." And I met her. She had got a Ph.D. and she was president of a university nearby.
Tavis: That's a great story.
Carter: And I just thought that was the impact my mother had on people's lives. She changed a life.
Tavis: When you tell the story of your mother being 70, basically, and going to India to join the Peace Corps, as I was reading the book I was thinking that you are like your mother in so many ways, but in the sense that as she got older, she got bolder. (Laughter) That's my new line for President Carter. As he gets older, he gets bolder.
You seem, out of love and service to people, truly to not care what they think about what you do, what you have to say. This Hamas - I know you've been asked about it a thousand times, I don't care about asking you about it, but am I right about this? As you get older, you get bolder?
Carter: I guess so. I've got Secret Service protection the rest of my life, and I'm not running for anything. (Laughter)
Tavis: That helps, huh?
Carter: So I can basically do what I want to. (Laughter) But my mother did the same thing, as a matter of fact, when I was president. She helped put me in the White House, and when I was president I would try to have a press conference. I want to talk about the Soviet nuclear threat, I want to talk about peace in the Middle East, I want to talk about global environment. And the first question I would get was, "Mr. President, how do you react to what your mama said on the 'Johnny Carson Show' last night?" Or the "Merv Griffin Show," or even Walter Cronkite.
She would just take over the show, and after five minutes you would think that they were her guests on her show. But anyway, I would say, "Look, I'm not responsible for what my mother said last night. She has her own life to live; I've got to be president of the United States."
Tavis: On a serious note, though, how do you navigate being president with a mother who is that outspoken while you're occupying the Oval Office?
Carter: Well, we just had to separate ourselves. (Laughter) As a matter of fact, I sympathized last week with Obama, who was kind of afflicted with what his pastor said. And Roslyn said, "Jimmy, that reminds me of Mama when you were president." (Laughter) But she didn't - well, she had a lot of effect on me, and obviously I loved my mama.
She was a dynamo. She tried to say strange things. As a matter of fact, the first year I was in the White House they came out with this game called Trivial Pursuit and you couldn't hardly get a copy of it. I finally got one copy for my children, because I was the president. But -
Tavis: There's a little-known presidential fact right there. Jimmy Carter used his (laughs) -
Carter: That's true.
Tavis: - used his power to get a copy of Trivial Pursuit.
Carter: That's true, I did. My staff contacted the manufacturers. They sent me one copy for Christmas, I appreciated it.
Tavis: Wow. One copy.
Carter: Yeah, 1977. And when I opened it up, one of the questions was "Who said, 'When I look at my children, I wish I had remained a virgin?'" It was Lillian Carter was that answer. (Laughter) She was something. But she was a great person and she was an inspiration, because she always did what she thought was right.
And when she was 70 years old, I put it in the book, she kept a diary. And she said, I hope for my children, in effect, that they'll always do what they think is right, and what they think is exciting and adventurous and unpredictable and gratifying, and not give a damn what anybody says about them." So in a way, Mama's wish has come true (unintelligible).
Tavis: How did you, how do you, for a woman who you loved so much, navigate every day without her being around?
Carter: I navigate with her memory, because I still live in Plains, Georgia. We haven't moved anywhere. We haven't gotten anywhere in life, we're still right there where (laughter) I was born, where my wife was born.
Tavis: The man from Plains, still in Plains.
Carter: Absolutely. I'm still working the same land that's been in our family since 1833. I'm still growing peanuts and cotton and corn. I was on my farm yesterday morning.
Tavis: Still teaching Sunday school.
Carter: Still teaching Sunday school every Sunday. Our whole life is concentrated on that same little community, and so that makes it easy for me to remember my mother because all of her friends who are still living, and the ones that remember her, my age and younger, keep her alive in my memory. So Mother is still an inspiration to me, and I just really believe that she exemplified what a human being ought to be.
Because she put into practice in the most enjoyable way and in the most humorous way, quite often, her religious faith, because she worshipped the Prince of Peace, not preemptive war. She worshipped a leader who was filled with justice for the poor. So I think that in many ways, my mother was not only a great American citizen, but she was a great follower of the faith that shaped her life.
Tavis: Let me close, then, on this note. What is the abiding lesson from Ms. Lillian to you that you can now share with us about how we do that? That is to say, to take what we read, take the word, and to put it into deed?
Carter: Well, I think what she wished for on her 70th birthday is good. I think that she wanted all of her children - maybe everybody listening to my voice - do what you think is right and fair, and be inquisitive in your mind to identify things that are wrong, but which society accepts. Like racial segregation - for 100 years everybody said it's fine, it's okay, and they even used bible verses to support it.
She thought that was wrong, and she tried to change it as an unknown nurse in a tiny little town in south Georgia, and she maintained that commitment of bringing justice to the world all her life. And eventually, she became the First Mother of America, and became famous, and she could shape peoples' lives on television programs as important as this one.
And so I think that that's the lesson that I would tell everybody: Don't underestimate your own capability to do right if you're courageous enough to face the facts and withstand criticism.
Tavis: Perfect note on which to end this conversation. I confess, I never get tired of talking to President Carter. He - what you doing tomorrow, man?
Carter: I'm going home. (Laughter) We're having a global health program at the Carter Center tomorrow, and I'll be working side-by-side with the secretary general of the United Nations tomorrow.
Tavis: Always, always working. Whenever he goes, which I pray is no time soon, Jimmy Carter is going to go with his boots on. He's going to go working. His new book, "A Remarkable Mother," about his mother Ms. Lillian, just in time for Mother's Day. A great gift. Mr. President, always an honor to have you here.
Carter: Thanks very much, Tavis.
Tavis: Good to see you.
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