President Jimmy Carter

I am writing this Storied Charlotte blog post on December 21, 2024, which is the official release date for The Literary Legacy of Jimmy Carter:  Essays on the President’s Books.  I have been working on editing this book for the past two years, so it is gratifying to see this work come to fruition.  

When I began editing this book, I invited writers with Charlotte connections to join the other contributors to the collection.  These Charlotte writers not only wrote essays for the book, but they also became part of a broader community of scholars who share an interest in President Carter’s career as an author. In many ways, this book is associated with this community, a community that has strong ties to Charlotte.

Now that the book is officially launched, I think that it is a fitting time to acknowledge the roles that Charlotte writers played in making this book a reality. Frye Gaillard, a former reporter for The Charlotte Observer, went from being a contributor to joining me as the co-editor of this collection.  Frye wrote or co-wrote several of the essays in the collection, and he threw himself into the editing process.  Other Charlotte writers who contributed to the collection include Paula Connolly, Boyd Davis, Paula Eckard, Jeffrey Leak, Richard Leeman, Ronald Lunsford, Emily Seelbinder, Daniel Shealy, and Meredith Troutman-Jordan.

For readers who want more information about the book, please click of the following link: https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538188330/The-Literary-Legacy-of-Jimmy-Carter-Essays-on-the-Presidents-Books  

President Carter will always be associated with his hometown of Plains, Georgia, and with Atlanta, which is home to the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum.  However, with the publication of The Literary Legacy of Jimmy Carter, Storied Charlotte has emerged as something of a hotbed of scholarship on President Carter’s books. 

I am writing this Storied Charlotte blog post on October 1, 2023, which is President Jimmy Carter’s 99^th birthday.  President Carter has been on my mind a lot lately.  A few months ago, I signed a book contract to edit an essay collection tentatively titled The Literary Legacy of Jimmy Carter:  Essays on the President’s Books.  President Carter published over thirty books, more than any American president except Theodore Roosevelt.  Like President Roosevelt, President Carter wrote his own books without relying on ghostwriters.  As part of my research for this collection, I visited the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum in Atlanta this past summer.  All of the news surrounding President Carter’s 99^th birthday has caused me to reflect on my recent visit to the museum.

I arrived at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum on a Saturday morning.  I thought that if I got there as soon as it opened, I would have the place to myself.  I was wrong.  I discovered that the Freedom Farmers’ Market takes place at the Carter Center every Saturday, so the grounds were teeming with people.  However, most of them were not there to visit the museum.  A cluster of about twelve of us gathered at the entrance to the museum, and as soon as the doors opened, we all entered together.

The museum provides visitors with an excellent overview of President Carter’s life, covering his childhood in Plains, Georgia, his years with the United States Navy, his political career as the Governor of Georgia and then the President of the United States, and his humanitarian work with the Carter Center.  For more information about the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum, please click on the following link:    https://www.jimmycarterlibrary.gov

I thoroughly enjoyed examining the museum exhibits, but what impressed me the most about my visit to the museum was the sense of community that I experienced while interacting with a number of the other visitors.  Since we all entered the museum at the same time, we watched the introductory film about President Carter’s life and career while sitting near each other in the auditorium.  After the film concluded, we began touring the exhibits as a group, and soon we began talking with each other.  

We talked about the times that we met President Carter.  I told the story of meeting him in New Hampshire while he was running for the presidency in 1975.  I was a college student at the time, and I attended one of his campaign events.  After listening to his speech, I had a brief conversation with him and bought a copy of his first book, Why Not the Best?  A couple shared their experiences of working alongside President Carter on a Habitat for Humanity project.  A woman in her early thirties talked about hearing President Carter give one of his famous Sunday school lessons in Plains. 

We talked some about his presidency, but we mostly talked about his post-presidency years.  Several of the people I talked to were from Georgia, and they talked about his contributions to the state. A man wearing a “Navy Veteran” shirt and a “Black Lives Matter” button said how much he admired President Carter’s commitment to the civil rights movement.  He said that he knew the late Representative John Lewis and had volunteered on several of his campaigns.  He reported that Rep. Lewis always had good things to say about President Carter.  

A middle-aged man from Atlanta said that he was born during President Carter’s time in the White House, and he went on to say that he took pride in President Carter’s associations with Atlanta.  He commented on how thrilled he was when he once saw President Carter and Rosalynn Carter at an Atlanta Braves game.  The woman who had shared her story about attending one of President’s Carter’s Sunday School lessons said that she grew up attending a Baptist church in Atlanta, and she admired his determination to act on his religious beliefs.

We were quite a diverse group, reflecting different ages, races, and religious backgrounds.  However, we were all brought together by our shared respect for President Carter.  In this time of division, President Carter’s ability to bring people together is a remarkable gift.  I think of it as his birthday gift to the American people.