Jimmy Carter

Greetings my fellow Observers,

Now that Jimmy Carter is suffering with brain cancer, the Republican Party has backed off from constantly using his name as the un-Ronald Reagan and as a very failed Democratic President. The media also has backed down from all of the negative press that they heaped on this very mild mannered peanut farmer from Plains, Georgia.

The following is a recap of an article that Mad Man observed in the Los Angeles Times and written by Ari Berman whose credential swill appear at the end of this very detailed and honest report of how the far right treated a good man.

In 1954 when segregationist organizations were popping up all over the south as a result to the Supreme Court's decision on Brown versus The Board of Education, the police chief in Plains, GA, and a minister approached Jimmy Carter about joining their movement. Mr. Carter turned them down. They returned three times and eventually threatened to destroy his peanut business by turning his customers against him.

Although the dues to join this racist group was only $ 5.00, that they agreed to pay on Mr. Carter's behalf, he finally said to them, "I don't need your five dollars, I have the five dollars but I would rather flush the $ 5.00 down toilet than give it to you". 

Very few people could imagine that Jimmy Carter would be a civil rights advocate but that is what he became. When he was campaigning against George Wallace and on the campaign trail Mr. Carter included these comments in one of his speeches. "I say to you quite frankly that the time for racial discrimination is over.

During his run for President, Mr. Carter ran on a platform of the equal rights for all and included support from the major civil rights activists of the time. His backers included Andrew Young and Barbara Jordan, the first African American members of congress. During the Democratic Convention in New York, Barbara Jordan gave the keynote speech, Andrew Young made the nomination and Martin Luther King, Sr., delivered the closing benediction.

When campaigning in Black neighborhoods like Watts, Carter told audiences. " I could not stand here today as a candidate for President of the United States had it not been for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr." The Voter Education Project led by civil rights icon John Lewis, plastered thousands of posters across the south that read;  
" Hands that pick cotton, can now pick our public officials."

Jimmy Carter was eventually defeated by Ronald Reagan who went about destroying all of the positive civil rights legislation that was passed during the Carter Administration. The following will let you all know what a bigoted pig Ronald Reagan was.

1. Reagan opposed Civil Rights Act of 1964, the voters rights act,
    and the Fair Housing Act of 1968.

2. Reagan kicked off his campaign for president in Neshoba 
    County, Mississippi where civil rights activists James Chaney, 
    Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner had been murdered   
     in 1964.

3. Reagan installed conservative lawyer William Bradford
    Reynolds who believed "that government imposed
    discrimination has created a racial spoils system in America,
    favoring historically disadvantaged minorities over whites.

4. The five conservative Justices on the Supreme Court who
    recently gutted the voting rights act in 2013 were all appointed
    by Reagan or worked in his administration.

And it goes on and on. To understand the real identity of the Republican Party candidates all one has to do is listen to the number of them who claim to be the next Ronald Reagan, which is "dog whistle" rhetoric for vote for me and I will keep America White.

So the next time that you see a Republican candidate for President stand in front of a microphone, just remember how badly they treated Jimmy Carter when they revoked all of his, what was then, very revolutionary legislation that gave African Americans more freedom than they ever had.

Sidebar: Ari Berman is a contributing writer for the Nation and the author of "Give Us The Ballot; The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America."

Mad Man