ATLANTA — Without Black voters, there would have been no President Jimmy Carter.
In 1976, African Americans catapulted the underdog Democrat to the White House with 83 percent support.
Four years later, they stuck by him, delivering nearly identical numbers even as many white voters abandoned him in favor of his victorious Republican challenger, Ronald Reagan.
This enduring Black support for Mr. Carter illuminates two intertwined and epochal American stories, each of them powered by themes of pragmatism and redemption.
One is the story of a white Georgia politician who began his quest for power in the Jim Crow South — a man who, as late as 1970, declared his respect for the arch-segregationist George Wallace in an effort to attract white votes, but whose personal convictions and political ambitions later pushed him to try to change the racist environment in which he had been raised.
The other is the story of a historically oppressed people flexing their growing electoral muscle after the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965 removed obstacles to the ballot box. Certainly, for some Black voters, candidate Carter was simply the least bad option. But for others, the elections of 1976 and 1980 were an opportunity to take the measure of this changing white man, recognizing the opportunity he presented, and even his better angels….
Historians say that Mr. Carter, early in his career, was both a creature and a critic of the strict segregationist system he had been born into. He largely kept his head down as civil rights advocates fought and sacrificed to change the status quo, with serious, and sometimes dangerous, protests and crackdowns flaring up in Sumter County….
After winning his 1962 State Senate race, Mr. Carter, a man of searing ambition, set his sights on the governor’s mansion but was defeated in 1966. He ran again and won in 1970, with a campaign full of unsubtle dog whistles to aggrieved white voters that included promises to restore “law and order” to their communities and, according to Mr. Alter, the dissemination of a “fact sheet” that reminded white voters that Mr. Carter’s Democratic opponent, former Gov. Carl Sanders, had attended Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s funeral.
In the Democratic primary, Black voters took notice: Mr. Sanders, in the runoff, garnered roughly 90 percent of their votes. But by the general election, Mr. Carter was campaigning heavily in Black churches.
The dog-whistle strategy had generated its share of bitterness and criticism. But a course correction followed, in the form of Mr. Carter’s inaugural address.
“The time for racial discrimination is over,” he said….
When the matter of Fred Chappell, Sumter County’s notoriously racist sheriff, came up [during the 1970 gubernatorial campaign], Mr. Carter called him a “good friend.” Mr. [Andrew] Young was taken aback: Mr. Chappell had once arrested Dr. King after a protest. When Dr. King’s associates tried to bring him blankets to ward off the cold, Mr. Chappell refused them and turned on the fan instead.
George Skelton, a Los Angeles Times columnist, recently recalled covering the candidate as he campaigned in Wisconsin and watching as he seemed to give contradictory messages on school busing to separate groups of Black and white voters within the span of a single day.
And in a speech about protecting neighborhoods, Mr. Carter used the phrase “ethnic purity,” creating a mini-scandal. Soon after, Mr. Young told him that the use of the phrase had been a “disaster for the And in a speech about protecting neighborhoods, Mr. Carter used the phrase “ethnic purity,” creating a mini-scandal. Soon after, Mr. Young told him that the use of the phrase had been a “disaster for the And in a speech about protecting neighborhoods, Mr. Carter used the phrase “ethnic purity,” creating a mini-scandal. Soon after, Mr. Young told him that the use of the phrase had been a “disaster for the campaign.” Mr. Carter issued an apology.
As president, Mr. Carter sought “to mend the racial divide,” said Kai Bird, another Carter biographer. Mr. Bird noted that food aid was significantly expanded under Mr. Carter, benefiting many poor Black residents in rural areas. Mr. Bird also noted that the Carter administration had toughened rules aimed at preventing racially discriminatory schools from claiming tax-exempt status.
If that explains why Black voters stuck with Mr. Carter in 1980, it may have also sown the seeds of his defeat. “I think all of these decisions were too much for white America,” Mr. Bird said. “Ronald Reagan came along and appealed much more to white voters.”
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