(moving orchestral music) (moving music continues) - Hello, I'm Jeff Hullinger.

James Earl Carter, better known simply as Jimmy, once described himself as conservative, moderate, liberal, and middle of the road, often confounding the expectations of those he served and those who served with him.

The only Southerner to be elected president since the Civil War.

His one and only term was considered at times a failure of policy and the man.

But since his departure from the White House, there is new perspective, new thought that many of his ideas were simply ahead of their time.

His post-presidency work championing human rights, monitoring elections, and supporting the eradication of many diseases also has helped rejuvenate his reputation.

Peter Biello takes a look at the life and times of the 39th president and Georgia's own Jimmy Carter.

(gentle piano music) - [Peter] He was the small-town peanut farmer from Georgia who went on to serve in the White House as the 39th president of the United States.

But the achievements of James Earl Carter, Jr. went far beyond his time in political office.

Known for his toothy smile and soft-spoken Southern cadence, Jimmy Carter was a lifelong humanitarian, a lover of music and poetry, a Nobel Prize winner, a caring husband, father and grandfather, an unprecedented conservationist, and the first and only Georgian to become President of the United States.

He was considered to be honest, intelligent, disciplined and energetic, and at times stubborn, impatient, self-righteous, and an enigma to even those closest to him.

(upbeat folk music) Born on October 1st, 1924, Carter grew up in Archery, Georgia, just a mile or two from Plains.

It was a far cry from the marble and glamour of Washington, DC, where Carter would eventually reside.

Jimmy Carter's mother worked long hours as a nurse in the nearby White and Black communities, while his father, an enterprising businessman and farmer, served on the county school board and one term as a state representative.

Lillian Carter was gone so much that Jimmy and his two sisters would jokingly refer to a side table near the front door as mother.

- They would call this table mother because Ms. Lillian would leave instructions for them on the table.

But it gave you a sense of a little bit of a feeling that she wasn't there for them, that they were latchkey kids to use a expression from a later generation.

- [Peter] In her absence, a family farm hand named Rachel Clark would often spend time with young Jimmy, teaching him about nature, fishing and spirituality.

Carter would later say that she "was the cause of me being what I am".

- In many ways, Jimmy Carter described him as more present than his own mother in his young life and very connected to giving him many of the values that we know him for.

- [Peter] Carter graduated valedictorian of his class at Plains High School and decided to join the Navy.

He was inspired by his uncle, who sent postcards from across the world during his service.

It was also one of his few options.

- [Jimmy] From the time I was five or six years old, my aspirations were to go to college, and during those Depression years, the only potential colleges were at West Point and Annapolis because they were free.

I chose Annapolis.

- [Peter] After graduating from the Naval Academy with an engineering degree, Carter married Eleanor Rosalynn Smith in July of 1946.

He spent the next seven years pursuing his Navy career.

During this time, he and Rosalynn had three sons: Jack, Chip, and Jeff.

Jimmy Carter would follow his father's footsteps into local government after he returned from his service in the Navy in 1953.

- I never intended to leave the Navy until I was home with my father during his final days and saw how much his life meant to Plains and how significant his life was in the personal wellbeing of so many people.

- [Peter] Carter first served on the Sumter County School Board in November 1955.

It was the start of a political career that would span over a quarter century and take him to the highest executive office in the land.

And at his side all along would be his close confidant, political advisor, and wife, Rosalynn Carter.

- My grandmother is certainly the best political mind in the family.

My grandfather has incredible attributes, but my grandmother really is his strength and really is the person to whom he goes for anything and everything that he really needs.

Without her, I don't think he can think of himself without her, really.

And they have that kind of just incredible loving partnership.

- She would go someplace where she knew nobody, and by the time she left, the whole place was charmed.

And she was seen as Jimmy Carter's secret weapon.

Rosalynn Carter allowed her husband to essentially be in two places at the same time, could campaign in two places at the same time.

That's a huge asset in politics.

- [Peter] With her help, Jimmy was elected to the State General Assembly in 1963.

And in 1966, Carter would make his first run for governor, but was soundly beaten, finishing third in the Democratic Party primary.

(gentle piano music) Defeated, exhausted, and in debt.

Carter returned to Plains to manage his family farm supply business and plan his next venture into politics.

It was during this time that Carter's sister, Ruth Carter Stapleton, helped Jimmy reconnect with his spirituality.

Next year, he traveled around the Northeast for a few weeks, doing missionary work.

He would later say that it was during this time that he became born again.

1967 was also the year that the Carters would have their fourth child and only daughter, Amy.

(upbeat jazz music) Carter's 1970 gubernatorial run would feature a more conservative campaign message, a strategy intended to appeal to a wider range of White voters in Georgia's electorate.

While he would meet with civil rights leaders, Carter would also downplay appearances before African-American groups and sought the endorsement of several avowed segregationists, including Lester Maddox.

Indeed, the tone of Carter's campaign did not endear him to the state's Black voters during the Democratic Primary.

Despite winning his party's nomination, he did not receive much African-American support.

The state's biggest newspaper at the time, The Atlanta Constitution, refused to endorse him and called him, quote, "an ignorant, racist bigot".

- Because he was a really Southern-talking White man, I was discriminating against him in my judgments about him.

- [Peter] Once elected, Carter changed his tone dramatically.

- I say to you, quite frankly, that the time for racial discrimination is over.

- [Peter] In his inaugural address as governor, Carter would stun and outrage many of his supporters, especially the segregationist that he wooed during the campaign, - It was a sign that sometimes you're not quite sure what you're getting.

I interviewed Vernon Jordan, the late Vernon Jordan, a few years ago about this, and he said that, during that 1970 campaign, Carter came up to him and whispered, "Vernon, don't pay attention to what I'm saying.

Pay attention to what I do when I get there," and that turned out to be accurate.

- [Peter] He also angered many state workers in his first year in office when he reorganized and downsized the state government, consolidating departments, removing political appointees, and professionalizing its agencies.

- He set an example as governor by appointing more African Americans and other minorities and women more to office in Georgia than had ever been appointed before.

- [Peter] And he dedicated a portrait to Martin Luther King in the state capitol, as the KKK protested outside.

But Governor Carter wasn't always understood by those who had to work with him.

He spent his spare time reading policy papers or scientific articles and often knew more about the minutiae of a subject than those around him.

His attention to detail, sometimes to obsessive levels, led some to believe that his approach didn't allow him to see the whole picture.

But in many cases, it was this immersion that ultimately helped him find solutions to problems that proved to be vexing to others.

Carter also had a troubled relationship with his fellow Democrats.

At times he would be aloof and at times a bully.

But rarely did he seek and nurture support from his own party to help push through his agenda.

Both traits would follow him as President.

Carter the conservationist pushed through legislation that allowed public access to all of George's waterways, prevented the Chattahoochee River from being developed, protected wetlands, and stopped numerous dam projects.

To learn more about the rivers he was trying to protect, he took up kayaking and shot Class Five rapids on the Chattooga River.

- What Jimmy Carter did for the state of Georgia when he was governor has had just unbelievable long-term effects on this state.

Anybody who likes to go out on a river, you really can thank Jimmy Carter, because many of these rivers were in the process of being damned.

- [Peter] Carter would eventually earn the support of civil rights icons Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King, Sr., and Andrew Young during his time as governor.

This support helped Carter raise his profile on the national stage with Black and liberal voters.

- The significant thing was there had been 11 or 12 very liberal senators or congressmen who were from the North, who were running for president.

And when we asked them how many Black staffers they had, each one of them had one.

And Jimmy Carter has 27?

There's something different.

- [Peter] As a virtual unknown outside of the state of Georgia, this would prove crucial when Carter declared his campaign for the 1976 presidential election.

- My name is Jimmy Carter, and I'm running for President.

(crowd cheering) - [Peter] Jimmy Carter would run as the ultimate Washington outsider and would benefit from a new distrust of government, following publicized scandals in the 1970s.

- President Carter had not had any Washington experience, which could be a bad thing but in this case was a good thing because he was not involved with Watergate or with the Vietnam War, a very unpopular war in the United States.

And so he was able to run as a fresh face, someone who would not lie to the American people.

- [Peter] He was also a complete dark horse.

A Gallup Poll published a month before Carter announced his campaign didn't even have him listed among the top 30 potential Democratic candidates.

But slowly, Carter began winning over voters with his charm, confidence, youthful energy, and an extremely effective staff.

His campaign concentrated their energies on the Iowa Caucus and the New Hampshire Primary, both of which he would win.

He enlisted country western and rock stars like Willie Nelson and the Allman Brothers to help raise campaign funds.

And he was endorsed by a young senator from Delaware named Joe Biden.

As early candidates dropped out, Carter rose in the polls, eventually securing the nomination, Carter won a close race against Republican Gerald Ford with 50% of the popular vote.

(crowd cheering) A combination of his outsider image and a yearning for new national leadership among voters would prove to be the difference for the incoming 52-year-old president.

- In this outward and physical ceremony, we attest once again to the inner and spiritual strength of our nation.

As my high school teacher, Ms. Judy Coleman, used to say, we must adjust to changing times and still hold to unchanging principles.

- [Peter] Despite his single, four-year term in the Oval Office, Carter was an unusually productive president.

He worked with a Democratic House and Senate to pass more legislation than any president other than Lyndon B. Johnson since the end of World War II.

He revolutionized the roles of the First Lady and Vice President by empowering them and including them in new, expansive roles, and created two new cabinet-level departments: Education and Energy.

He appointed the first Black UN Ambassador, Andrew Young, and sent him to Africa to meet with African leaders to ask them what the US could do with them.

And he appointed more women and minorities to his cabinet and federal judgeships than any other president up to that time, including future Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

But one of his greatest political successes would be linked to his lifelong passion for conservation and the environment.

- He doubled the size of the National Park Service, one of his many underappreciated accomplishments, with the Alaska Lands Bill and many other things that he did environmentally.

And then, of course, the first fuel economy standards, the first toxic waste cleanup, the first funding for green energy.

The list goes on and on and on of what he did for the environment when he was president.

- [Peter] His international diplomacy resulted in the United States and the People's Republic of China agreeing to recognize one another and establish diplomatic relations for the first time in decades.

And he negotiated the controversial Panama Canal Treaty, which gave back the canal to Panamanians, averting almost certain conflict.

(audience applauding) In 1978, the Camp David talks would bring together two Middle East adversaries who had already fought four wars between 1948 and 1973.

Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egypt's President Anwar Sadat would wrestle over the terms of a peace treaty for 13 long days, urged on by President Carter, even when all three parties threatened to quit in exasperation.

It would ultimately lead to the Camp David Accords, the longest-lasting major peace treaty since World War II.

- He's most famous for his achievement at Camp David, where he brought peace between Egypt and Israel.

President Carter had two great campaigns.

One was on human rights in the world, and one was on peace.

He was the only president since World War II who did not send American troops into combat.

- [Peter] Despite increasing defense spending sharply, his decision to negotiate the SALT II Treaty with the Soviet Union led to charges of weakness from conservatives.

Congress refused to ratify the agreement after the Soviets invaded Afghanistan.

He would later covertly arm Afghani mujahideen fighters against those same Soviets.

He funded the development of top secret stealth aircraft projects and placed medium-range nuclear missiles in Europe aimed at the Soviet Union.

(somber music) But for many Americans, Carter's presidency became synonymous with pain and suffering.

Oil shortages led to long lines at gas stations and increased home heating bills.

Slow economic growth following the Vietnam War, coupled with high inflation, termed stagflation, led to astronomically high interest rates, hurting Americans in the pocketbook.

Sensing America's morose mood in 1979, President Carter decided to address their discomfort.

- The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America.

- He never used the word malaise, but it was called the malaise speech because he attributed some of this unhappiness in the country to what he called a crisis of confidence.

And it was true that America was in a kind of a bad, sour mood, and Carter didn't know how to connect to the public and pull the country out of that mood.

- [Peter] Hailed at first as a great speech by the press and even his pundits, any momentum he gained was lost by firing a large portion of his cabinet in the weeks after.

Americans finally lost their confidence in Jimmy Carter.

It was a dramatic turnaround.

In the first few months of his presidency, Carter saw his approval ratings reach as high as 75%.

But during 1979, his ratings were lower than President Nixon's after the Watergate scandal.

In November of that year, 52 American diplomats and citizens were taken hostage in Iran by Islamic students after the US refused to return the Shah, who was in the U.S. receiving cancer treatment, fearing the Ayatollah Khomeini and his fundamentalist regime would execute the former leader.

Americans would spend the next 444 days watching the painful nightly news coverage of the hostages being paraded out for the cameras, waiting for the President to do something.

Carter refused to bomb Iran, certain that it would lead to the death of hostages.

Critics again called his military inaction weak.

When diplomatic attempts failed to free the hostages, Carter ordered a risky rescue mission.

But it, too, failed when a U.S. helicopter crashed into a U.S. military plane in the Iranian desert, killing eight U.S. servicemen.

A political challenge by Ted Kennedy in the run-up to the 1980 election for the presidency fractured the party.

And while Carter did eventually secure the nomination, like his time as governor, his unwillingness to play the political game left him with few allies and little support within his own party.

The growing sense that America had lost its way ushered Carter out of the White House after one term.

Ronald Reagan would win the 1980 election in a landslide.

- He was defeated for three reasons: the economy, the fact that he hadn't unified the Democratic party, and the fact that the hostages had not been brought back safely from Iran at the time of the election.

I think the economy was so bad that he would have lost Reagan in any event, maybe not by as wide a margin, if the hostages had come home safely, but he still would have lost.

Because when Reagan turned to the camera in their one and only debate and said, "Are you better off than you were four years ago?"

there were very few Americans who could say yes.

Khomeini's Both Jimmy and Rosalynn would later refer to the loss as his involuntary retirement.

But that wasn't the end of Carter's life in the public eye.

- Jimmy Carter came back to Georgia at the age of 55.

He was one of the youngest former presidents, and he was not ready to retire.

He had a great number of things that he wanted to do, and he wasn't going to hide away.

He was going to get back into public life.

- I was bitter about Jimmy being defeated.

Yes.

And, well, first we wrote books.

And in writing the books, we realized how being in the governor's mansion and the White House had broadened our view of what was important in the world.

And I woke up one night.

Jimmy was sitting straight up in the bed.

I thought he was sick, because he always sleeps all night long.

And he said, "I know what we can do at the presidential library.

We can have a place to resolve conflict."

So it really started to resolve conflicts.

- [Peter] In 1982, Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter formed the Carter Center.

Over the next four decades, the Carter family would leave a lasting impression in some of the most underserved communities across the globe through their work at the center.

Together with his lifelong partner, Rosalynn, Jimmy Carter would take on some of the most pressing issues on the international stage.

- This would be an institution that would deal with conflict resolution, but with all other issues of peace and human rights throughout the world.

- [Peter] Disease eradication, promoting sound agricultural practices, election monitoring, building homes with Habitat for Humanity, and high-profile peace missions were also to become part of the Carter Center's ethos.

- So, peace and freedom, human rights and alleviation of suffering, the equality of opportunity on earth, the giving of every human being a modicum of self-respect and human dignity and hope that their future would be better, those are the things that I believe are completely possible based on the principles that we've established and have continued to pursue at the Carter Center.

- [Peter] And even as he reached well into his 90s, Carter remained an active member of the communities and initiatives he had been a part of his entire life.

(gentle folk music) James Earl Carter, Jr. requested that he be buried not far from where he was born, in Plains, Georgia.

His body will rest in a grave marked with a simple stone underneath a willow tree on his family's property.

- President Carter lost his lifelong partner and wife, Rosalynn, in 2023.

He turned 100 years old in 2024 and continued a quiet life in Plains, Georgia until his death.

Steve Penley's art is bold and colorful, often painting political icons, famous entertainers, and patriotic Americana.

But images of his adopted state also make up a large portion of his portfolio, images that are instantly recognizable to anyone who has spent time here.

I sat down with Penley to talk about his work, his inspirations, and his longtime relationship with another Georgia legend.

He is the son of a Macon piano store owner.

Years later, the notes have changed, but the Buckhead artist extraordinaire, an impressionist with an international and national following, is reaching a very large audience.

Steve Penley, an important name in Washington DC political circles with Republicans and Democrats alike.

His vibrant colors, historical portraits, and gorgeous flowers are his Southern signature.

Much has been written and said about this UGA alum the last few years, but Steve Penley, ever true to his middle Georgia roots, values anchored in simplicity, like enduring friendships.

What about this state do you think defines the work that we see behind us?

- The connection I have with the people.

I think the Georgian people are the best people in the country, and they're the friendliest.

And so, I guess if my work reflects that, it happens subconsciously, maybe.

But I love the state and I love the people here.

It's a family in a way about that.

My foundations in art, especially when I was elementary school, they were so...

Which became my genre later on, they were so Americanized.

Like the Apollo mission was such part of all of us when we were little.

I mean, I must have drawn those astronauts, like Buzz Aldrin and all those guys, over and over again.

Back when we were kids, we knew those were our superheroes.

- [Jeff] You've met so many famous Georgians.

Vince Dooley I know is such a great friend of yours.

- He was great, one of the greatest people I've ever known.

It's a huge loss for me, and I know a lot of Georgians too, but personally, nothing quite like him.

He and I started out doing fundraising together years ago, and that's how we developed a friendship.

It was a great friendship.

But I would've felt a loss even if I'd never been friends with him, I think.

He loved to talk about the flee flicker against Alabama back in 1842.

(Jeff laughs) He says that he was the inventor of the fleet flicker.

I'm sure.

But he probably was.

But he talked about that.

He loved that play.

- [Jeff] I always think that we have had these people here for so long in our community that have been so much a part of our lives that we never think of them leaving.

But when they do leave, there's such a void, and they are so irreplaceable.

It's not the same without them, and Dooley is one of those figures.

- It was a huge loss.

I never knew how much of a part of my life he was.

But it was a privilege to have had such a good friendship with him over the years.

It's one of the greatest privileges I've ever had.

I've had a personal relationship with a lot of these people and these places, and so it's a part of me and a part of everyone who grew up here.

(gentle acoustic guitar music) - Many of Penley's artworks, usually celebrating patriotic themes, can be found in congressional offices throughout Washington, DC.

For "Georgia Legends", I'm Jeff Hullinger.

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