Jimmy Carter – Faith in Action

By Dr. Julianne Malveaux —

As our beloved 37^th President’s body makes its way from Plains, Georgia to Atlanta to the US Capitol to lie in state, tens of thousands of words will be published in tribute to him. A renaissance man, a diplomat, a philanthropist, a civil rights icon, and so much more he is most aptly described, in my opinion, as a man of faith. He lived by his faith and spoke openly of it, as far too few do. His faith allowed him to bring Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin together at Camp David in September 1978, and to overcome the obstacles of that fraught communication to reach the Camp David Accord between Egypt and Israel. His faith compelled him to embrace his defeat in 1980 and go on to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his work around peace, poverty. He was, in the words of President Joe Biden, “a man of character, courage, and compassion.”

Biden has declared January 9 a National Day of Mourning in Carter’s honor. Federal offices will be closed and postal service suspended. Flags will be flown at half-mast for thirty days, a fitting tribute to a man who was too often underappreciated during his Presidency, garnering more accolades for his post-presidential activism than for his Presidency itself. Even in this mourning, it is mor likely to hear President Carter described as “decent” than as outstanding or brilliant, even though he was. Nothing wrong with being described as decent. In fact, in this age of indecency and convicted felons moving into the Oval Office, decent is quite a compliment. But terms like decent, even outstanding, doesn’t capture the essence of James Earl Carter. His essence is that he was a man of faith, he embraced his faith, and he also publicly struggled with what his faith meant to him and how faith could transform other people.

Faith gave President Carter the impetus to be both humble and helpful. A woman talked on CNN, about how he, at 90. Took a broken chair from her porch fixed it and returned it. I have my own story of Carter helpful humility. I worked for the Council of Economic Advisors while I was working on my doctoral dissertation, and I was always running through the Old Executive Office Building with armfuls of papers. I dropped some of them, running nowhere fast, and had to turn around to retrieve them. The President of the United States stopped his stride thorough the Old EOB to help up my papers. I stammered thanks, and the President was very gracious. Asked my name and where I worked, told me, kindly, to be careful in the halls. His staffers tried to hurry him along, but he took a couple of minutes to talk to me and encourage me. When I said I was working on my dissertation, he was encouraging. The whole encounter could not have taken five minutes, and when I told a friend about it she simply said, “That’s President Carter”

Carter believed in diversity, although we didn’t call it that then. He appointed African Americans to untraditional positions. Patricia Robert s Harris first served as secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development ass the first Black woman to hold a Cabinet position. HUD was a somewhat traditional position for an African American, with economist Robert Weaver serving as the first HUD Secretary in 1966. Harris was the first Black woman to hold two cabinet positions, serving as the first secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services under Carter. He also lifted up Ron Brown, Ben Hooks, Alexis Herman and many others. Having grown up next door to a Black family who often cared for him, President Jimmy Carter believed in opening doors for the underrepresented, including African Americans and women.

His post-Presidential contributions are notable, especially his work with Habitat for Humanity, where the former President took hammer to hand and helped build thousands of homes and encouraged others to do the same thing. But his Presidency was hardly a failure. Carter was not bombastic. Like Biden, he rarely tooted his own horn which perhaps led to his 1980 defeat. He created the departments of Energy and the Department of Education. He worked on nuclear disarmament and sought to contain Soviet aggression with a grain embargo and a boycott of the Moscow Olympics. In his short one-term presidency he made a difference.