Narrator: "As a child my greatest ambition was to be valuable around the farm and to please my father," Jimmy Carter wrote of his boyhood in rural Georgia. "He was the center of my life and the focus of my admiration."

Dan Carter: I can't believe that Jimmy Carter ever felt lost. In the sense that he didn't know where his place was in the world and a lot of that comes from his father, who, not only was a well respected, powerful figure in the community, but I think had a real sense of who he was. And that certitude and self-confidence was something that his son, I think, absorbed unconsciously.

Narrator: By the standards of southwest Georgia, Earl Carter presided over a small empire. A staunch segregationist, he owned some 350 acres of land where he planted corn, cotton and peanuts employing more than 200 workers at harvest time. Five sharecropper families who depended on him for their survival lived year round at his farm in Archery.

Betty Glad, Political Scientist: Earl was the boss in Archery. The workers were all black, the maids who did the cooking and took care of Jimmy were black, and at the top of the system was Earl Carter.

Narrator: From a position of privilege, Earl's children, Jimmy, Gloria and Ruth, became acquainted with the ways of the Jim Crow South. "More than anyone else in my family... even my own father... I understood the plight of the black families because I lived so much among them," Carter later wrote. He often ate and slept in the homes of his black neighbors and played with their children.

Andrew Young, U.N. Ambassador: The interesting thing about the South is that we played together, black and white, when we were 7, 8, 9, 10, but then when you got to be a teenager, all of a sudden, ah, segregation set in.

Narrator: "One day, [my friends] and I approached [a] gate," Carter would later recall, "to my surprise they stepped back to let me go through first.... It was a small act, but a deeply symbolic one.... Things were never the same between them and me."

"A strong memory in my mind is coming home and my mother not being there," he wrote.

Dan Carter: There is a very deep tradition in Southern society of the caretaker mother figure who is responsible not only for her family but outside of it as well. Well, those people exist in almost every Southern rural community, but Miss Lillian took it a step further than that.

Narrator: Carter's mother, Lillian, was an avid reader, loved traveling, and was known to enjoy a sip of bourbon. She put in long hours as a nurse at a nearby hospital and devoted much of her free time to helping sick neighbors, regardless of race.

Chip Carter, Son: She got paid in chickens and vegetables and that kind of things, because she really helped -- and felt called to help -- those that had less than her. And I think she instilled that in all of her children.

Rosalynn Carter: She was the only person in Plains who would take up for Abraham Lincoln if he was ever brought up. Today it's unbelievable to think about that, but back then it was just a way of life. And we never thought anything... we never thought it was really wrong.

Narrator: Lillian set for Jimmy the example of service to others. Earl put the steel in his character.

Betty Glad: He was very demanding. He expected his children to be the very best and in some ways they all had that built into them.

Narrator: "I never remember him saying 'good job' when I did my best to fulfill his orders," Jimmy later said. "The punishments he administered remained vivid in my memory." A short distance from the Carter farm was Plains, Georgia, population 600. The only place for miles to get a cup of coffee, a haircut, buy or sell goods. It is the place Jimmy Carter always called home. Where as a child he went to the all-white Baptist church on Sundays, and where he attended the all-white public school.

Dan Carter: Everybody knew that he was special. He was somebody different -- smarter than, worked harder than, did more than, ceaselessly working at improving himself even as a child.

Narrator: Jimmy made all A's -- he played basketball, and joined the book lover's club -- read Shakespeare's King Lear, Ben Hur, the Hunchback of Notre Dame. He dreamed of joining the Navy. His Uncle Tom Gordy had excited his imagination with tales of adventures, and postcards and gifts from exotic faraway places. Earl encouraged Jimmy to pursue his dream.

Betty Glad: It was a way that many young Southern men got the polish, got the education that would make them a part of either the local elite or the national elite.

Narrator: Jimmy reviewed the strict requirements of the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis and worried he wasn't good enough. He thought his feet were flat and rolled them over coke bottles to strengthen the arches. He thought he was too thin and went on a banana diet. He even went to a local college for two years to study the required courses. "He just wouldn't quit," Jimmy's Uncle Alton would later say. "That boy just wouldn't give up on anything." In June 1943, at age 18 the farm boy from Plains was admitted to the US Naval Academy at Annapolis -- the first Carter ever to leave Georgia to pursue a higher education.