When Carter returned to Plains, Georgia, to become a peanut farmer after serving in the Navy, he became a member of the Sumter County School Board, which did not implement the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision handed down by the Supreme Court. Instead, the board continued to segregate school children on the streets of Carter’s hometown.
As Laughlin McDonald, director of the ACLU’s Voting Project, relates in his book A Voting Rights Odyssey: Black Enfranchisement in Georgia, Carter’s board tried to stop the construction of a new “Elementary Negro School” in 1956. Local white citizens had complained that the school would be “too close” to a white school. As a result, “the children, both colored and white, would have to travel the same streets and roads in order to reach their respective schools.” The prospect of black and white children commingling on the streets on their way to school was apparently so horrible to Carter that he requested that the state school board stop construction of the black school until a new site could be found. The state board turned down Carter’s request because of “the staggering cost.” Carter and the rest of the Sumter County School Board then reassured parents at a meeting on October 5, 1956, that the board “would do everything in its power to minimize simultaneous traffic between white and colored students in route to and from school.”
It seems that the CHICKENS are coming home to roost!
1 comment:
I'm still trying to figure out why anyone gives any weight to anything that man has to say.
Iran hostage crisis, Gasoline lines, Afghanistan, missing the Olympics, hopping into bed with Saddam, kissing Arafat, supporting terrorists over democracy, selling out Israel, legitimizing dictators the world over, certifying fraudulent elections across the globe, that family (except Roslyn...she's always been the classy one), those teeth, the pious hypocrisy, interfering in foreign policy, the enduring damage that has been done to America's reputation and standing in the world.
Fortunately, the man will die one day. That is a terrible thing to say, but it is how I feel. He represents a link to memories of terrible things past, and gives oine a horrifying view of the potential future of the political left. Now that President Clinton's sainthood has been delayed and needs to be re-written, and President Obama's will never occur because he will become a reviled figure in American history, Jimmy Carter will -- by default --be held up as the shining example of liberalism's 'better virtues' in the latter half of the 20th century.
God help us if that ever happens.
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